He sat erect with a gasp of amazement, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with shaking hand. He looked down at the fireman, who had phlegmatically resumed his duties; then over at the engineer, who was gazing straight ahead of him, his face set and gray. “What happened?” he shouted, as the fireman closed the fire-box and stood resting for a moment. “Blamed if I know,” the latter answered. “I was shovellin’ in coal, when Bill clapped on the brakes and purty nigh throwed me into the fire-box. Then we passed a freight an’ Bill let her out again. He must ’a’ thought she was on the same track.” “She _was_ on the same track,” said Allan. “Well, we passed her, anyway,” retorted the fireman, philosophically, and returned to his duties. Then Allan remembered the switch and understood dimly what had happened. But it was not until the investigation was held that he knew all the details. The crew of the freight were, of course, hauled up “on the carpet.” The two brakemen who had opened the switches at the proper instant and shunted the special past were commended for their prompt action, and exonerated from blame, as the train was, of course, in charge of the conductor and engineer. The two latter worthies were suspended indefinitely without pay. It was by no means the first time in the history of the road that a freight crew had gone to sleep on a siding and waked up to find that they no longer knew what their rights were. The proper thing to have done, of course, was either to have flagged in to the next station, or to have hunted up the nearest telephone and found out from the dispatchers’ office just what their rights were. “That front brakeman will make a good railroad man,” remarked Mr. Plumfield, when the inquiry into the incident was over, taking a little red, leather-bound book from a drawer of his desk. “He’s quick-witted—no man ever lasted very long with a railroad who wasn’t.” He ran down the index at the front of the book, turned to the names of the four men who had just been on the carpet, and wrote a short sentence after each of them. That record would stand to commend or condemn them so long as they were connected with the road. The record of every man was there, with all his merits and demerits. Train masters might forget—might be promoted or discharged—but that record always remained. “Yes,” went on the train master, restoring the book to its drawer, “if a railroad man’s wits aren’t hung on hair-triggers and quicker than greased lightning in action, he’s usually knocked into Kingdom Come before he has a chance to realize he never was cut out for the work.”