"Good heavens! I should say so. They don't run freight such nights as this?" "Don't they? Well, I guess they don't stop for a storm like this if they's any money to be made by sending her through. Many's the night I've broke all night on top of the old wooden cars, when the wind cut like a razor. Shear the hair off a cast-iron mule--_woo-o-o_! There's where you need grit, old man," he ended, dropping into familiar speech. "Yes; or need a job awful bad." The brakeman was struck with this idea. "There's where you're right. A fellow don't take that kind of a job for the fun of it. Not much! He takes it because he's got to. That's as sure's you're a foot high. I tell you, a feller's got t' rustle these days if he gits any kind of a job----" "_Toot, too-o-o-o-t, toot!_" The station passed, the brakeman did not return, perhaps because he found some other listener, perhaps because he was afraid of boring this pleasant young fellow. Albert shuddered with a sympathetic pain as he thought of the men on the tops of the icy cars, with hands straining at the brake, and the wind cutting their faces like a sand-blast. His mind went out to the thousands of freight trains shuttling to and fro across the vast web of gleaming iron spread out on the mighty breast of the Western plains. Oh, those tireless hands at the wheel and throttle! He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock; the next station was Tyre. As he began to get his things together, the brakeman came in. "Oh, I forgot to say that the old lady's name is Welsh--Mrs. Robert Welsh. Say I sent yeh, and it'll be all right." "Sure! I'll try her in the morning--that is, if I find out I'm going to stay." "Tyre! _Tyre!_" yelled the brakeman, as with clanging bell and whizz of steam the train slowed down and the wheels began to cry out in the snow. Albert got his things together, and pulled his cap firmly down on his head. "Here goes!" he muttered. "Hold y'r breath!" shouted the brakeman. Albert swung himself to the platform before the station--a platform of planks along which the snow was streaming like water. "Good night!" called the brakeman. "_Good_ night!" "All-l abo-o-o-ard!" called the conductor somewhere in the storm; the brakeman swung his lantern, and the train drew off into the blinding whirl, and the lights were soon lost in the clouds of snow. No more desolate place could well be imagined. A level plain, apparently bare of houses, swept by a ferocious wind; a dingy little den called a station--no other shelter in sight; no sign of life save the dull glare of two windows to the left, alternately lost and found in the storm. Albert's heart contracted with a sudden fear; the outlook was appalling. "Where's the town?" he yelled savagely at a dimly seen figure with a lantern--a man evidently locking the station door, his only refuge. "Over there," was the surly reply. "How far?" "'Bout a mile." "A mile!" "That's what I said--a mile." "Well, I'll be blanked!"