“‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘Mebbe th’ engine hit me. Where’s Welsh an’ the rest o’ th’ gang? They oughtn’t to have gone off an’ left me layin’ out here like this,—I didn’t think they’d do that!’ “‘What engine hit you?’ I asked. “‘Why, th’ engine o’ Number Four,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have time t’ git out of th’ road after I threw th’ switch. But I didn’t think th’ boys’d ’a’ left me layin’ out here like this. Why, I might ’a’ died!’ “Well, sir, it come to me all in a minute that somehow Reddy Magraw had got his senses back, an’ I tell you it set me a-tremblin’ jest like th’ time my wife had her first baby. I was purty nigh scared to death! “‘I guess th’ engine must ’a’ hit you, sure,’ I says, to ease him up. Then, as th’ track was clear, I opened up my engine, while Magraw set on the floor of th’ cab in a dazed sort of way. Never a word did he say till we pulled into the yards. “‘You’d better see a doctor,’ I says. But he jumped off th’ engine th’ minute we stopped. “‘I don’t want no doctor,’ he says. ‘I’m goin’ home.’ An’ he started off on a run. “Well, you orter seen Mr. Schofield when I told him. He went along with th’ boy, an’ seen him fixed up, an’ then hurried away with th’ doctor t’ see Reddy. An’ he found him at home with his wife on one knee an’ his children on th’ other,—he told us when he got back.” Johnson stopped, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his eyes openly. “I don’t keer,” he said, looking around defiantly. “It’s enough t’ make any man’s eyes wet t’ think of what that family’s been through, an’ now Reddy’s give back to ’em ag’in with a head’s good as anybody’s. Why, it beats anything I ever heard of!” And, indeed, it was a nine-days’ wonder to every one. The doctors came and looked at him and explained what had happened in many learned words, and one of them wrote a paper about it, which he read before a medical society; the newspapers heard of it and wrote it up, and published Reddy’s photograph,—why, Mrs. Magraw has all those papers put carefully away, and she gets them out occasionally even yet, and reads them and cries over them,—but they are tears of happiness and thanksgiving. For Reddy was as well as ever, and the gist of all the learned medical opinions was that the blow on the head which Allan dealt him had somehow set right the brain disordered by the blow it had received from the engine months before. It did for him just what an operation might have done, and did it effectually. How it had done it, the doctors couldn’t say, and there were many warm discussions over it. It was not without precedent,—not unfrequently a case of the same kind is reported,—but the righting of that delicate mechanism, the brain, is something that no physician, be he never so famous, as yet thoroughly understands.