All the men in the dispatchers' office of course knew Allan, and liked him, and he received a hearty greeting when he arrived for his first morning's instruction. He drew up a chair beside the first trick man on the west end, popularly known as "Goody," not because of any fundamental traits of character, but because his name happened to be Goodnough. "Goody" had reached his present position of primacy by working up regularly through the various grades, and train-dispatching had become to him a sort of second nature. He was a good-humoured, companionable fellow, with an inexhaustible fund of anecdote and a fondness for practical jokes which not even advancing years and a twinge of rheumatism now and then could diminish. It is related of him--but, there, to recount half the things related of him would be to add another book to this series. Allan, as we have said, drew up his chair beside him and took his first real lesson in train-dispatching. He had, of course, a general idea of how the thing was done, but never before had any one taken the time or trouble to explain its intricacies to him. The dispatcher sat before a long desk, on which, beside his key, sounder, bottle of ink, pens, and so on, lay the train-sheet, upon which the movement of every train was entered. The sheet, reduced to its simplest form, appears on the opposite page. Just as Allan sat down, the operator at Harper's called up and reported that Number Seven had passed there at 7.02. The dispatcher acknowledged the message and wrote "7.02" in the column devoted to Train No. 7, opposite Harper's. A moment later, the operator at Madeira reported the passage of No. 70 at 6.04. This was also duly acknowledged and noted, and so on through the day, the columns of figures on the sheet were added to, showing the position, at that particular moment, of every train, freight or passenger, on the west end of the division. On the opposite side of the table sat the dispatcher in charge of the east end, recording, in a precisely similar manner, the progress of the trains on his end of the line.