The rain was fine and close, like a slanting mist that pierced the pores, when the Express drew out of the station, and as it fell, it froze. Stokes growled that "the track would be one glare of ice before they got Her in." He was inclined to be surly to-night, an uncommon circumstance with the young fellow, and after several attempts to enliven him, Top, Senior, let him alone. He was not in a talkative mood himself. The tea-table chat ran in his head and set him to dreaming and calculating. In five years Junior would be seventeen--old enough, even for a lad who was "not strong," to earn his living. If all went well, there ought to be a hundred and fifty dollars in the bank by then. There might be something in Mother's idea of setting him up as a florist. And Mother could help with the flowers. "Hello! ole feller! look out!" Stokes had stumbled over the fuel in the tender, in replenishing the boiler-fires. He recovered himself with an oath at the "slippery rubbish." Something had upset his temper, but he neither spoke nor looked like a man who had been drinking. The teazing, chilling drizzle continued. The headlight of the locomotive glanced sharply from glazed rails and embankments; the long barrel-back of the engine shone as with fresh varnish. "D'ye know that on a night like this She beats out the tune o' _Home, Sweet Home_, 's plain as ever you heerd a band play it?" said Top, Senior, cheerily out of the thickening damps. "It makes me see Mother 'n the boy clear 's ken be. It's a great thing fur a man to hev a comfortable home, 'n a good woman in it!" Stokes burst out vehemently at that: "This is worse than a dog's life! We--you 'n me--are no more to them selfish creturs in there"--nodding backwards at the passenger cars--"then the ingine that draws 'em. I'm sick o' freezin' an' slavin' an' bein' despised by men no better 'n I be! How a man of any sperrit 'n' ambition ken stan' it fur twenty years as you hev, beats my onderstandin'." He will always remember the pause that prefaced the reply, and how Top, Senior, patted the polished lever under his hand as he spoke: "She's a pretty respectable cretur, take Her all in all. When you 'n I run into the las' dark deepo that's waitin' fur us at the end, I hope we'll be able to show's good stiffikits as hern. Here's the bridge! Will be soon home, now."