laughing. “That’s a great load off my mind. What’s that book you’re hugging so lovingly?”
“It’s a book on telegraphy,” and Allan showed him the title.
“Going to study it?”
“Yes; it didn’t take me long to find out that to amount to anything in the offices, one has to understand what all that chatter is about.”
“Right you are,” assented Jim, “but you’ll find it mighty hard work learning it from a book. It’ll be a good deal like learning to eat without any food to practise on. Have you got an instrument?”
“No. But of course I’ll get one.”
“Look here!” cried Jim, excitedly, struck by a sudden idea; "I have it! My brother Bob has two instruments stored away in the attic, batteries and everything. He’s the operator at Belpre now, and hasn’t any more use for them than a dog has for two tails. He’ll be glad to let us have them—glad to know that his lazy brother’s improving his spare time. Why can’t we rig up a line from your house to mine, and learn together? I’m pretty sure I can get some old wire down at the shops for almost nothing."
“That’s a great idea,” said Allan, admiringly; “if we can only carry it out. Where do you live? Is it very far?”
“Well, it’s quite a way; but I think we can manage it,” said Jim. “Suppose we look over the ground.”
“All right; only wait till I take this book home; I live just over yonder,” and a moment later they were at the gate. “Won’t you come in?”
“No, not this time; it’ll soon be dark and we’ll have to step out pretty lively.”
“I won’t be but a minute,” said Allan; and he wasn’t.
The two started up through the yards together, arm in arm. Jim’s house was, as he had said, “quite a way;” in fact, it was nearly a mile away, straight out the railroad-track. The house was a large brick, which stood very near the track, so near, indeed, that one corner had been cut away to permit the railroad to get by. The house had been built there nearly a century before by some wealthy farmer who had never heard of a railroad, and never dreamed that his property would one day be wanted for a right of way. But the day came when the railroad’s surveyors ran their line of stakes out from the town, along the river-bank, and up to the very door of the house itself. Condemnation proceedings were begun, the railroad secured the strip of land it wanted, and tore down the corner of the house which stood upon it. Whereupon the owner had walled up the opening and rented what remained of the building to such families as had nerves strong enough to ignore the roar and rumble of the trains, passing so near that they seemed hurling themselves through the very house itself.
Allan knew it well. He had passed it many and many a time while he was working on section. Indeed, it was this old house, when he learned its history, which made him realize for the first time, how young, how very modern the railroad was. Looking at it—at its massive track, its enduring roadway carried on great fills and mighty bridges—it seemed as old, as venerable, as the rugged hills which frowned down upon the valley; it seemed that it must have been there from the dawn of time, that it was the product of a force greater than any now known to man. And yet, really, it had been in existence scarce half a century. Many men were living who had seen the first rail laid, who had welcomed the arrival of the first train, and who still recalled with mellow and tender memory the days of the stage-coach—a mode of travel which, seen through the prism of the years, quite eclipsed this new fashion in romance, in comfort, and in good-fellowship.
This leviathan of steel and oak had grown like the beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer—had spread and spread with incredible rapidity, until it reached, not from earth to heaven, but from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf. It had brought San Francisco as near Boston as was Philadelphia in the days of the post rider. The four days’ stage journey from New York to Boston it covered in four hours. It had bound together into a concrete whole a country so vast that it equals in area the whole of Europe. And all this in little more than fifty years! Verily, there are modern labours of Hercules beside which the ancient ones seem mere child’s play!
“It’s a long stretch,” said Allan, looking back, through the gathering darkness, along the way that they had come. “It must be nearly a mile from here to the station.”
“Just about,” agreed Jim. “But I know Tom Mickey, the head lineman, pretty well, and I believe that I can get him to let us string our wire on the company’s poles. You see there’s three or four empty places on the cross-bars.”
“Oh, if we can do that,” said Allan, “it will be easy enough. Do you suppose he will let us?”
“I’m sure he will,” asserted Jim, with a good deal more positiveness than he really felt. “I’ll see Mickey in the morning—I’ll start early so I’ll have time before the whistle blows.”
“It seems to me that you’re doing it all, and that I’m not doing anything,” said Allan. “You must let me furnish the wire, anyway.”
“We’ll see about it,” said Jim. “Won’t you come in and see my mother?” he added, a little shyly.
“It’s pretty late,” said Allan. “Do you think I’d better?”
“Yes,” Jim replied. “She—she asked me to bring you, the first chance I had.”
“What for?” asked Allan, looking at him in surprise.
“No matter,” said Jim. “Come on,” and he opened the door and led him into the house.
They crossed a hall, and beside a table in the room beyond, Allan saw a woman seated. She was bending over some sewing in her lap, but she looked up at the sound of their entrance, and as the beams of the lamp fell upon her face, Allan saw how it lighted with love and happiness. And his heart gave a sudden throb of misery, for it was with that selfsame light in her eyes that his mother had welcomed him in the old days.
“Mother,” Jim was saying, “this is Allan West.”
She rose with a little cry of pleasure, letting her sewing fall unheeded to the floor, and held out her hands to him.
“So this is Allan West!” she said, in a voice soft and sweet and gentle. “This is the boy who saved my boy’s life!”
“It was nothing,” stammered Allan, turning crimson. “You see, I just happened to be there—”
“Nothing! I wonder if your mother would think it nothing if some one had saved you for her!”
A sudden mist came before Allan’s eyes; his lips trembled. And the woman before him, looking at him with loving, searching eyes, understood.
“Dear boy!” she said, and Allan found himself clasped close against her heart.
CHAPTER IV
THE YOUNG OPERATORS
Tom Mickey, chief lineman of the Ohio division of the P. & O., was, like most
