And then, like a handful of mud upon the merriment fell the roar of the man at the controller. He was grinding frantically at the brake. The huge muscles of his back had split his coat in the effort. The party got up and saw ahead of them a sharp incline, ending in an unprotected bridge. “Gee-rusalem!” bawled Jimmie suddenly. “Wood’s Bridge--the worst in the country. I forgot it.” At that instant a crack, followed by the jingle of metal, told them that the brake-chain was broken. The car, which had slacked a little of its speed, leaped forward again. “Turn off your power! Reverse, I mean!” yelled Jimmie. Then came a thudding sound on the car’s roof. “Oh,” he groaned, “the trolley’s off!” Near that bridge, a few feet from the side of the track, there was a long haystack. “Farmers to the front!” said Tommie. “Every man to the step, and jump!” In a twinkling twelve young men rolled along a haystack. They rolled and rolled. They gathered much hay, but, still dominant above the mischance, the souls of ten foot-ball players and two trolley men rose triumphant. They wanted to see the last of 809. She took the rest of the grade like a bucking bronco. She hit the bridge like an avalanche. Something gave way, or held too strongly, for 809 sprang into the air, turned completely over and went down in thirty feet of dirty water, trucks up, with a tremendous splash. Silence stared with stony faces. “She’s gone,” said Tommie solemnly. “Beyond recall,” assented the mechanical engineer. “And I am going, too,” said Tommie. The college men said nothing, but, as the thin procession topped the hill two miles away, the fat man led by twenty yards. II THE NUMISMATIST POSSESSION IS NINE POINTS OF THE LAW, SELF-POSSESSION THE TENTH Election day, ’96, was big medicine in Terrapin. Miners all down from the upper camps, shoutin’ Free Silver, and morose about John Sherman. All the cow-boys from the immediate vicinity were in. The immediate vicinity of any point in the North-west is a good big scope of country--say as far as two men can ride fast in as many days as it takes to get there. In Brown’s Bank there was a sound of deviltry by night. Them back from the bar couldn’t get back. A damsel with a dulcimer was dispensin’ sweet strains, and a minority of the convention thought they was singing to keep her from feeling conspicuous, each delegate voting for a different tune. The toot ongsom was calculated to make an escaped lunatic homesick. In the middle of this dispensation I comes in, late. I endeavored to attract the attention of the bar creature by shouting and sign talk, for I wanted to do my duty. I know I yelled, for I could feel my jaw waggle, and my breath give out--but I couldn’t hear nothin’. No one would take my money. Some one or two drinks were handed to me, however, a handful of cigars and six dollars change. Them Free Silver fellows shore believed what they said.