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+Project Gutenberg's Bart Stirling's Road to Success, by Allen Chapman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bart Stirling's Road to Success
+       Or; The Young Express Agent
+
+Author: Allen Chapman
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2005 [EBook #15903]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ed Casulli and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A PIECE OF ROPE WAS LOOPED DEFTLY ABOUT BART'S ARMS.
+_Bart Stirling's Road to Success Page_ 217]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS
+
+Or
+
+The Young Express Agent
+
+BY ALLEN CHAPMAN
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE HEROES OF THE SCHOOL," "NED WILDING'S DISAPPEARANCE,"
+"FRANK ROSCOE'S SECRET," "FENN MASTERSON'S DISCOVERY," "BART KEENE'S
+HUNTING DAYS," ETC., ETC.
+
+NEW YORK
+CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
+1908
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE BOYS' POCKET LIBRARY
+
+  BY ALLEN CHAPMAN
+
+  Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 35 cents, postpaid.
+
+  THE HEROES OF THE SCHOOL
+  NED WILDING'S DISAPPEARANCE
+  FRANK ROSCOE'S SECRET
+  FENN MASTERSON'S DISCOVERY
+  BART KEENE'S HUNTING DAYS
+  BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS
+  WORKING HARD TO WIN
+  BOUND TO SUCCEED
+  THE YOUNG STOREKEEPER
+  NED BORDEN'S FIND
+
+  CUPPLES & LEON CO, Publishers, New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+  I.      THE THIRD OF JULY
+  II.     "WAKING THE NATIVES"
+  III.    COUNTING THE COST
+  IV.     BLIND FOR LIFE
+  V.      READY FOR BUSINESS
+  VI.     GETTING "SATISFACTION"
+  VII.    WAITING FOR TROUBLE
+  VIII.   THE YOUNG EXPRESS AGENT
+  IX.     COLONEL JEPTHA HARRINGTON
+  X.      QUEER COMRADES
+  XI.     "FORGET IT!"
+  XII.    THE MYSTERIOUS MR. BAKER
+  XIII.   "HIGHER STILL!"
+  XIV.    MRS. HARRINGTON'S TRUNK
+  XV.     AN EARLY "CALL"
+  XVI.    AT FAULT
+  XVII.   A FAINT CLEW
+  XVIII.  A DUMB FRIEND
+  XIX.    FOOLING THE ENEMY
+  XX.     BART ON THE ROAD
+  XXI.    A LIMB OF THE LAW
+  XXII.   BART STIRLING, AUCTIONEER
+  XXIII.  "GOING, GOING, GONE!"
+  XXIV.   MR. BAKER'S BID
+  XXV.    A NIGHT MESSAGE
+  XXVI.   ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
+  XXVII.  LATE VISITORS
+  XXVIII. THIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE
+  XXIX.   BROUGHT TO TIME
+  XXX.    "STILL HIGHER!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THIRD OF JULY
+
+
+"You can't go in that room."
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+"Because that's the orders; and you can't smoke in this room."
+
+Bart Stirling spoke in a definite, manly fashion.
+
+Lemuel Wacker dropped his hand from the door knob on which it rested,
+and put his pipe in his pocket, but his shoulders hunched up and his
+unpleasant face began to scowl.
+
+"Ho!" he snorted derisively, "official of the company, eh? Running
+things, eh?"
+
+"I am--for the time being," retorted Bart, cheerfully.
+
+"Well," said Wacker, with an ugly sidelong look, "I don't take
+insolence from anyone with the big head. I reckon ten year's service
+with the B. & M. entitles a man to know his rights."
+
+"Very active service just now, Mr. Wacker?" insinuated Bart pleasantly.
+
+Lem Wacker flushed and winced, for the pointed question struck home.
+
+"I don't want no mistering!" he growled. "Lem's good enough for me. And
+I don't take no call-down from any stuck-up kid, I want you to
+understand that."
+
+"You'd better get to the crossing if you're making any pretense of real
+work," suggested Bart just then.
+
+As he spoke Bart pointed through the open window across the tracks to
+the switch shanty at the side of the street crossing.
+
+A train was coming. Mr. Lemuel Wacker was "subbing" as extra for the
+superannuated old cripple whose sole duty was to wave a flag as trains
+went by. To this duty Wacker sprang with alacrity.
+
+Bart dismissed the man from his mind, and, whistling a cheery tune, bent
+over the book in which he had been writing for the past twenty minutes.
+
+This was the register of the local express office of the B. & M., and
+at present, as Bart had said, he was "running it."
+
+The express shed was a one-story, substantial frame building having two
+rooms. It stood in the center of a network of tracks close to the
+freight depot and switch tower, and a platform ran its length front and
+rear.
+
+Framed by the window an active railroad panorama spread out, and beyond
+that view the quaint town of Pleasantville.
+
+Bart had spent all his young life here. He knew every nook and corner of
+the place, and nearly every man, woman and child in the village.
+
+Pleasantville did not belie its name to Bart's way of thinking. He voted
+its people, its surroundings, and life in general there, as pleasant as
+could well be.
+
+Here he was born, and he had found nothing to complain of, although he
+was what might be called a poor boy.
+
+There were his mother, his two sisters and two small brothers at home,
+and sometimes it took a good deal to go around, but Bart's father had a
+steady job, and Bart himself was an agreeable, willing boy, just at the
+threshold of doing something to earn a living and wide-awake for the
+earliest opportunity.
+
+Mr. Stirling had been express agent for the B. & M. for eight years,
+and was counted a reliable, efficient employee of the company.
+
+For some months, however, his health had not been of the best, and Bart
+had been glad when he was impressed into service to relieve his father
+when laid up with his occasional foe, the rheumatism, or to watch the
+office at mealtimes.
+
+Bart was on duty in this regard at the present time. It was about five
+in the afternoon, but it was also the third of July, and that date, like
+the twenty-fourth of December, was the busiest in the calendar for the
+little express office.
+
+All the afternoon Bart had worked at the desk or helped in getting out
+packages and boxes for delivery.
+
+A little handcart was among the office equipment, and very often Bart
+did light delivering. On this especial day, however, in addition to the
+regular freight, Fourth of July and general picnic and celebration goods
+more than trebled the usual volume, and they had hired a local teamster
+to assist them.
+
+With the 4:20 train came a new consignment. The back room was now nearly
+full of cases of fruit, a grand boxed-up display of fireworks for
+Colonel Harrington, the village magnate, another for a local club, some
+minor boxes for private family use, and extra orders from the city for
+the village storekeepers.
+
+It was an unusual and highly inflammable heap, and when tired Mr.
+Sterling went home to snatch a bite of something to eat, and lazy Lem
+Wacker came strolling into the place, pipe in full blast, Bart had not
+hesitated to exercise his brief authority. A spark among that tinder
+pile would mean sure and swift destruction. Besides, light-fingered Lem
+Wacker was not to be trusted where things lay around loose.
+
+So Bart had squelched him promptly and properly. The man for whom "Lem"
+was good enough, was in his opinion pretty nearly good for nothing.
+
+Bart made the last entry in the register with a satisfied smile and
+strolled to the door stretching himself.
+
+"Everything in apple-pie order so far as the books go," he observed. "I
+expect it will be big hustle and bustle for an hour or two in the
+morning, though."
+
+Lem Wacker came slouching along. It was six o'clock, the quitting hour.
+Lem was always on time on such occasions. The whistle from the shops had
+ceased echoing, and, his dinner pail on his arm and filling his
+inevitable pipe, he paused for a moment.
+
+"Going to shut up shop?" he inquired with affected carelessness.
+
+"I am going home, if that's what you mean," replied Bart--"as soon as my
+father comes."
+
+"Not feeling very well lately, eh?" continued Lem, his eyes roving in a
+covetous way over the cozy office and the comfortable railroad armchair
+Mr. Stirling used. "No wonder, he takes it too hard."
+
+"Does he?" retorted Bart.
+
+"You bet he does. Wish I had his job. I'd make people wait to suit my
+ideas. How's the company to know or care if you break your neck to
+accommodate people? Too honest, too."
+
+"A man can't be too honest," asserted Bart.
+
+"Can't he? Say, I'm an old railroader, I am, and I know the ropes. Why,
+when I was running the express office at Corydon, we sampled everything
+that came in. Crate of bananas--we had many a lunch, apples, cigars,
+once in a while a live chicken, and always a couple of turkeys at
+holiday time."
+
+"And who paid for them?" inquired Bart bluntly.
+
+"We didn't, and no questions asked."
+
+"I am afraid your ideas will not make much impression on my father, if
+that is what you are getting at," observed Bart, turning unceremoniously
+from Wacker.
+
+"Humph! you fellows ought to run a backwoods post office," disgustedly
+grunted the latter, as he made off.
+
+Bart had only to wait ten minutes when his father appeared. Except for a
+slight limp and some pallor in his face, Mr. Stirling seemed in his
+prime. He had kindly eyes and was always pleasant and smiling, even when
+in pain.
+
+"Well! well!" he cried briskly, with a gratified glance at his son after
+looking over the register, "all the real hard work is done, the work
+that always worries me, with my poor eyesight. Come up to the paymaster,
+young man! There's an advance till salary day, and well you've earned
+it."
+
+Mr. Stirling took some money from his pocket. There was a silver dollar
+and some loose change. Bart looked pleased, then quite grave, and he put
+his hand resolutely behind him.
+
+"I can't take it, father," he said. "You have a hard enough time, and I
+ought to pay you for the experience I'm getting here instead of being
+paid."
+
+"Young man," spoke Mr. Stirling with affected sternness, but a
+twinkling in his eye, "you take your half-pay, make tracks, enjoy
+yourself, and don't worry about a trifle of a dollar or two. If you
+happen to drop around this way about nine o'clock, I'll be glad of your
+company home."
+
+He slipped the money into Bart's pocket and playfully pushed him through
+the doorway. Bart's heart was pretty full. He was alive with tenderness
+and love for this loyal, patient parent who had not been over kindly
+handled by the world in a money way.
+
+Then a dozen loud explosions over on the hill, followed by boyish shouts
+of enthusiasm, made Bart remember that he was a boy, with all a boy's
+lively interest in the Fourth of July foremost in his thoughts, and he
+bounded down the tracks like a whirlwind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"WAKING THE NATIVES!"
+
+
+Turning the corner of the in-freight house Bart came to a quick halt.
+
+He had nearly run down a man who sat between the rails tying his shoe.
+
+The minute Bart set his eyes on the fellow he remembered having seen him
+twice before--both times in this vicinity, both times looking wretched,
+dejected and frightened.
+
+The man started up, frightened now. He was about forty years old, very
+shabby and threadbare in his attire, his thin pale face nearly covered
+with a thick shock of hair and full black beard.
+
+"Hello!" challenged Bart promptly.
+
+"Oh, it's you, young Stirling," muttered the man, the haunted expression
+in his eyes giving way to one of relief.
+
+"Found a job yet?" asked Bart.
+
+"I--haven't exactly been looking for work," responded the man, in an
+embarrassed way.
+
+"I should think you would," suggested Bart.
+
+"See here," spoke the man, livening up suddenly. "I'll talk with you,
+because you're the only friend I've found hereabouts. I'm in trouble,
+and you can call it hiding if you like. I'm grateful to you for the help
+you gave me the other night, for I was pretty nigh starved. But I don't
+think you'd better notice me much, for I'm no good to anybody, and I
+hope you won't call attention to my hanging around here."
+
+"Why should I?" inquired Bart, getting interested. "I want to help you,
+not harm you. I feel sorry for you, and I'd like to know a little more."
+
+A tear coursed down the man's forlorn face and he shook his head
+dejectedly.
+
+"You can't sleep forever in empty freight cars, picking up scraps to
+live on, you know," said Bart.
+
+"I'll live there till I find what I came to Pleasantville to find!"
+cried the man in a sudden passion. Then his emotion died down suddenly
+and he fell to trembling all over, and cast hasty looks around as if
+frightened at his own words.
+
+"Don't mind me," he choked up, starting suddenly away. "I'm crazy, I
+guess! I know I'm about as miserable an object as there is in the
+world."
+
+Bart ran after him, drawing a quarter from his pocket. He detained the
+man by seizing his arm.
+
+"See here," he said, "you take that, and any time you're hungry just go
+up to the house and tell my mother, will you?"
+
+"Bless her--and you, too!" murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his
+throat. "I'll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don't
+you fret--it will come back. Yes! it will come back, double, the day I
+catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!"
+
+He dashed away with a strange cry. Bart, half decided that he was
+demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house
+just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and
+thoughtful over the peculiar incident.
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when Bart got through with his supper, did
+his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother,
+made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the
+other, and helped his sisters in various ways.
+
+Bart was soon in the midst of the fray. Every live boy in Pleasantville
+was in evidence about the village pleasure grounds, the common and the
+hill. Group after group greeted Bart with excited exclamations. He was a
+general favorite with the small boys, always ready to assist or advise
+them, and an acknowledged leader with those of his own age.
+
+He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various
+minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed
+up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited
+announcement that something unusual was going on there.
+
+The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.
+
+"Run!" shouted an excited voice, "she's going off."
+
+"No, she ain't," pronounced another scoffingly--"ain't lighted yet--no
+one's got the nerve to do it."
+
+Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem. He had
+noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown
+fellow who had gone around with his hands in his pockets sneering at the
+innocent fun the smaller boys were indulging in, and bragging about his
+own especial Fourth of July supply of fireworks which were to come from
+some mysterious source not clearly defined. The Wacker brothers belonged
+to a crowd Bart did not train with usually, but as Dale espied him and
+seized his arm energetically, Bart did not draw away, respecting the
+occasion and its courtesies.
+
+"You're the very fellow!" declared Dale.
+
+"You bet he is!" cried two others, crowding up and slapping Bart on the
+back. "He won't crawfish. Give him the punk, Dale."
+
+The person addressed extended a lighted piece of punk.
+
+"Yes, take it, Stirling," he said. "Show him, boys."
+
+"Yes, you'll have to show me," suggested Bart significantly. "What's the
+mystery, anyhow?"
+
+"No mystery at all," answered Dale, "only a surprise. See it--well, it's
+loaded."
+
+"Clean to the muzzle!" bubbled over an excited urchin.
+
+They were all pointing to the top of the hill. Bart understood, for
+clearly outlined against the light of the rising moon stood the grim old
+sentinel that had done duty as a patriotic reminder of the Civil War for
+many a year.
+
+"Old Hurricane" the relic cannon had been dubbed when what was left of
+Company C, Second Infantry, came marching back home in the sixties.
+
+There was not a boy in town who had not straddled the black ungainly
+relic, or tried to lift the heavy cannon balls that symmetrically
+surrounded its base support.
+
+Two years before, Colonel Harrington had erected at his own expense a
+lofty flagpole at the side of the cannon and donated an elegant flag.
+Every Washington's Birthday and Fourth of July since, this site had been
+the center of all public patriotic festivities, and the headquarters for
+celebrating for juvenile Pleasantville.
+
+Bart was a little startled as he comprehended what was in the wind. He
+thrilled a trifle; his eyes sparkled brightly.
+
+"It's all right, Stirling," assured Dale Wacker. "We cleaned out the
+barrel and we've rammed home a good solid charge, with a long fuse ready
+to light. Guess it will stir up the sleepy old town for once, hey?"
+
+Bart was in for any harmless sport, yet he fumbled the lighted piece of
+punk undecidedly.
+
+"I don't know about this, fellows"--he began.
+
+"Oh! don't spoil the fun, Stirling," pleaded little Ned Sawyer, a rare
+favorite with Bart. "We asked one-legged Dacy on the quiet. He was in
+the war, and he says the gun can't burst, or anything."
+
+The crowd kept pushing Bart forward in eager excitement.
+
+"Why don't you light it yourself?" inquired Bart of Dale.
+
+"I've sprained my foot--limping now," explained young Wacker. "She may
+kick, you see, and soon as you light her you want to scoot."
+
+"Go ahead, Bart! touch her off," implored little Sawyer, quivering with
+excitement.
+
+"Whoop! hurrah!" yelled a frantic chorus as Bart took a voluntary step
+up the hill.
+
+That decided him--patriotism was in the air and he was fully infected.
+One or two of the larger boys advanced with him, but halted at a safe
+distance, while the younger ones danced about and stuck their fingers in
+their ears, screaming.
+
+Bart got to the side of the cannon. It was silhouetted in the landscape
+on a slight slant towards the stately mansion and grounds of Colonel
+Harrington, in full view at all times of the magnate who had improved
+its surroundings.
+
+Bart made out a long fuse trailing three feet or more over the side of
+the old fieldpiece. He blew the punk to a bright glow.
+
+"Ready!" he called back merrily over his shoulder.
+
+The hillside vibrated with the flutter of expectant juvenile humanity
+and a vast babel of half-suppressed excited voices.
+
+Bart applied the punk, there was a fizz, a sharp hiss, a writhing worm
+of quick flame, and then came a fearful report that split the air like
+the crack of doom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+COUNTING THE COST
+
+
+Bart had quickly moved to one side of the cannon after lighting the
+fuse, and was about twenty feet away when the explosion came.
+
+The alarming echoes, the shock, flare and smoke combined to give him a
+terrific sensation.
+
+The crowd that had retreated down the hill in delightful trepidation now
+came trooping back filled with a bolder excitement.
+
+They had indeed "waked the natives," for gazing downhill against the
+lights of the street and stores at its base they could see people
+rushing outdoors in palpable agitation.
+
+Some were staring up the hill in wonder and terror, others were starting
+for its summit, among them two village officials, as demonstrated by the
+silver stars they wore.
+
+"They heard it--it woke 'em up, right enough!" shrieked little Sawyer
+in a frenzy of happiness.
+
+"Look yonder!" piped a second breathless voice. "Say, I thought I heard
+something strike."
+
+Dale Wacker came upon the scene--not limping, but chuckling and winking
+to the cronies at his back.
+
+"Pretty good aim, eh, fellows?" he gloated. "Stirling, you're a capital
+gunner."
+
+All eyes were now turned in a new direction--in that whither the muzzle
+of the cannon was pointed.
+
+The grounds of the Harrington mansion were the scene of a vivid
+commotion. The porch lights had been abruptly turned on, and they
+flooded the lawn in front with radiance.
+
+Bart gasped, thrilled, and experienced a strange qualm of dismay. He
+discerned in a flash that something heretofore always prominently
+present on the Harrington landscape was not now in evidence.
+
+The wealthy colonel was given to "grandstand plays," and one of them had
+been the placing of a bronze pedestal and statue at the side of the
+driveway.
+
+It bore the inscription "1812," and according to the colonel, portrayed
+a military man life-size, epaulettes, sword, uniform and all--his
+maternal grandfather as he had appeared in the battle scene where he had
+lost a limb.
+
+Now, in effigy, the valiant warrior was prostrate. The colonel's
+servants were rushing to the spot where the statue had tumbled over on
+the velvety sward.
+
+"See here!"--cried Bart stormingly, turning on Dale Wacker.
+
+"Loaded," significantly observed the latter with a diabolical grin.
+
+A rush of keen realization made Bart shiver. He recognized what the
+foolhardy escapade might have cost had that whirling cannon ball met a
+human, instead of an inanimate, target.
+
+As it was, he easily calculated the indignation and resentment of the
+haughty village magnate who was given to outbursts of wrath which
+carried all before him.
+
+"You've spoiled my Fourth," began Bart in a tumult. "I'll spoil your--"
+
+"Cut for it, fellows! they're coming for us!"
+
+"They" were the village officers. Bart had made a jump towards Dale
+Wacker, but the latter had faded into the vortex of pell-mell fugitives
+rushing away downhill to hiding.
+
+Bart put after them, trying to single out the author of the scurvy joke
+that he knew had serious trouble at the end of it.
+
+"Hold on!" gasped a breathless voice.
+
+"Don't stop me!" shouted Bart, trying to tear loose from a frantic grip.
+"Oh, it's you--what do you want?"
+
+He halted to survey the person who detained him--the man who haunted the
+freight tracks--to whom he had given money earlier in the evening.
+
+"Come, quick!" the man panted. "Express shed--where your father
+is--trouble. Don't wait--not a minute."
+
+"See here," challenged Bart, instantly startled into a new tremor of
+anxiety, "what do you mean?"
+
+But the forlorn roustabout could not be coherent. He continued to gasp
+and splutter out excited adjectives, fragmentary sentences.
+
+"Plot--get you into trouble--father--I heard 'em."
+
+Then as his glance fell upon the people coming up the hill, the officers
+in their lead, his eyes bulged with terror, he grasped Bart's arm, let
+out an unearthly yell of fear, and by sheer force carried Bart
+pell-mell down the other side of the hill with him.
+
+"See here," panted Bart, as, still running, they were headed in the
+direction of the railroad, "my business is here. Don't you hurry me off
+in this fashion unless there's something to it."
+
+"Told you--express shed--robbers!"
+
+"Robbers? You mean some one is stealing something there?"
+
+"Yes!" gulped Bart's companion.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Why didn't you stop them?"
+
+"I don't dare do anything," the man wailed. "I'm a poor, miserable
+object, but I'm your friend. I heard two fellows whispering on the
+tracks near the express shed. Said they were going to steal some
+fireworks. I ran to the shed to warn your father. He was asleep in his
+chair. They might see me--didn't dare do anything."
+
+Bart now believed there might be some basis to the man's statements. He
+plunged forward alone, not conscious that he was outdistancing his late
+companion.
+
+Reaching the tracks, Bart ran down a line of freights. The express shed
+was in view at last. It was lighted up as usual, the door stood open,
+and nothing suggested anything out of the ordinary.
+
+"The fellow's cracked," reflected Bart. "Everything looks straight
+here--no, it doesn't!" He checked himself abruptly. "Here! what are you
+at?"
+
+Sharp and clear Bart sang out. Approaching the express shed from the
+side, his glance shifted to the rear.
+
+The little structure had one window there, lightly barred with metal
+strips. Two men stood on the platform beneath it. One of them had just
+pried a strip loose with some long implement he held in his hand. The
+other had just pushed up the sash by reaching through the convenient
+aperture thus made.
+
+Bart bounded to the platform with a nimble spring. As his feet clamped
+down warningly on the boardway, the man who had pushed up the window
+turned sharply.
+
+"It's young Stirling!" Bart heard him mutter. "Drop it, and run."
+
+The speaker sprang to the ground and disappeared around the corner of
+the shed with the words.
+
+His companion, who had been stooping on one knee in his prying
+operations, essayed to join him, slipped, tilted over, and before he
+could recover himself Bart was upon him.
+
+"What are you about here?" demanded the latter.
+
+The prisoner was of man-like build and proportions. He did not speak,
+and tried to keep his features hidden from the rays of the near switch
+light.
+
+"Lemme go!" he mouthed, with purposely subdued intonation.
+
+"Not till I know who you are--not till I find out what you're up to,"
+declared Bart. "Turn around here. I'll stick closer than a brother till
+I see that face of yours!"
+
+He swung his captive towards the light, but a broad-peaked cap and the
+partial disguise of a crudely blackened face defeated his purpose.
+
+Bart was about to shout to his father in front, or to his roustabout
+friend, whom he expected must be somewhere near by this time, when his
+captive gave a jerk, tore one arm free, and whirled the other aloft.
+
+His hand clenched the implement he had used to pry away the bars, and
+Bart now saw what it was.
+
+The object the mysterious robber was utilizing for burglarious
+purposes, was the signal flag used at the switch shanty where Lem Wacker
+had been doing substitute duty that day.
+
+It consisted of a three foot iron rod, sharpened at the end. At the
+blunt end the strip of red flag was wound, near the sharp end the
+conventional track torpedo was held in place by its tin strap.
+
+"Lemme go"; again growled the man.
+
+"Never!" declared Bart.
+
+The man's left arm was free, and he swung the iron rod aloft. Bart saw
+it descending, aimed straight for his head. If he held on to the man he
+could scarcely evade it.
+
+He let go his grip, ducked, made a pass to grasp the burglar's ankle,
+but missed it.
+
+An explosion, a sharp flare, a keen shock filled the air, and before
+Bart could grip the man afresh he had sprung from the platform and
+vanished.
+
+At the same instant the flag rod clattered to the boards, and a second
+later, rubbing his face free from sudden pricking grains of powder, Bart
+saw what had happened.
+
+The blow intended for him had landed upon one of the iron bars of the
+window with a force that exploded the track torpedo.
+
+It had flared out one broad spiteful breath, sending a shower of sparks
+among the big mass of fireworks in the storage room, and amid a thousand
+hissing, snapping explosions the express shed was in flames.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BLIND FOR LIFE
+
+
+Bart's first thought was of his father. He instantly leaped from the
+platform.
+
+As he did so there was a violent explosion in the storage room, the
+sashes were blown from place outright, and Bart dodged to escape a
+shower of glass.
+
+He was fairly appalled at the suddenness with which the flames enveloped
+the interior, for they shot up in every direction, and the partition
+dividing the shed appeared blown from place.
+
+Rockets were fizzing, giant crackers exploding by the pack, and colored
+chemicals sending out a varied glow.
+
+Bart dashed for the front--a muffled cry caused him to hurry his speed.
+His father had uttered the cry.
+
+Dazed by the light, his eyes filled with smarting particles of burned
+powder, Bart suddenly came in violent contact with a human form just as
+he turned the corner of the shed.
+
+Both nearly upset in the collision. At first Bart fancied it might be
+one of the burglars, but peering closer he recognized the friendly
+roustabout.
+
+"Told you so!" gasped the latter in a desperate fluster. "Fire--I'll
+help you."
+
+"Yes, quick! run," breathed Bart, rushing ahead, "My father's in that
+burning building!"
+
+Bart was thrilled. The main room of the express shed was one bright blur
+of brilliancy and colored smoke.
+
+It rolled and whirled, obliterating all outlines within the room.
+
+"Father! father!" shouted Bart, dashing recklessly in at the open
+doorway.
+
+He could not make out a single object in that chaos, but he knew the
+location of every familiar article in the place, and made for the chair
+in which his father usually sat.
+
+"Father!" he screamed, as his hands touched the arms of the chair and
+found it empty.
+
+The sulphurous flames nearly choked him, the heat from the crackling
+wooden partition singed his hair, but he could only grope about blindly.
+
+"Here he is," sounded a suffocating voice.
+
+"Where, oh! where?" panted Bart.
+
+He threw out his arms wildly, groping to locate the speaker, whom he
+knew to be the roustabout. "Where is he--where is he?"
+
+He had come in contact with the roustabout now, who with all his
+timidity was proving himself a hero in the present instance.
+
+"Lying on the floor--stumbled over him--I'm on fire, too!"
+
+Bart's feet touched a prostrate form. It was moved along as Bart stooped
+and got hold of the shoulders.
+
+The roustabout was helping him. They dragged together, stumbling to the
+doorway on the very verge of fatal danger, and reeled across the
+platform.
+
+The roustabout jumped to the ground. Once there he gently but in a
+masterly way drew the inanimate form of Mr. Stirling from the platform,
+and carried him over to a pile of ties outside of the glow and scorch of
+the burning express shed.
+
+Bart anxiously scanned his father's face. It was black and blistered but
+he was breathing naturally.
+
+"Overcome with the smoke--or tumbled and was stunned," declared the
+roustabout.
+
+Excited approaching shouts caused the speaker to glare down the tracks.
+Half a dozen people were hurrying to the scene of the fire. The
+roustabout with a nervous gasp vanished in the darkness.
+
+Bart was hovering over his father in a solicitous way as a night
+watchman and a freight crew appeared on the scene. There was a volley of
+excited questions and quick responses.
+
+No means of extinguishing the flames were at hand. The newcomers
+suggested getting the insensible Mr. Stirling over to the street beyond
+the tracks a few hundred yards distant, where there was a drug store.
+
+Bart ran for the hand truck on the platform, saw two of the men start
+off with his father on it, and hurried back to the burning express shed.
+
+He had hoped to save something, but one effort drove him back, realizing
+the foolhardiness of repeating the experiment. The building and its
+contents were doomed.
+
+The crowd began to gather and grew with the moments. A road official
+appeared on the scene. Bart made a brief, hurried explanation and ran
+over to the drug store.
+
+To his surprise his father was not there. Bart approached the druggist
+to ask an anxious question when the companion of the latter, a
+professional-looking man, spoke up.
+
+"You are young Stirling, are you not?" he interrogated.
+
+"Yes, sir," nodded Bart.
+
+"Don't get frightened or worried, but I am Doctor Davis. We thought it
+best to send your father to the hospital."
+
+"To the hospital!" echoed Bart turning pale. "Then he is badly
+injured--"
+
+"Not at all," dissented the physician reassuringly. "He was probably
+overcome by the smoke or fell and was stunned, but that injury was
+trifling. It is his eyes we are troubled about."
+
+"Tell me the worst!" pleaded Bart in a choked tone, but trying to
+prepare himself for the shock.
+
+"Why, one eye is pretty bad," said the doctor, "and the other got the
+full force of some powder explosion. They have good people up at the
+hospital, though, and they will soon get him to rights."
+
+"I must tell my mother at once," murmured Bart.
+
+He left the place with a heart as heavy as lead. It seemed as if one
+furious Fourth of July powder blast had disrupted the very foundations
+of all the family hopes and happiness, leaving a blackened wreck where
+there had been unity, comfort and peace.
+
+If his father was disabled seriously, their prospects became a very
+grave problem. Bart, too, was worried about the loss to the express
+company. The books were probably out on the desk when the fire
+commenced, the safe was open, and the loss in money and records meant
+considerable.
+
+Bart felt that he was undertaking the hardest task of his life when he
+reached home and broke the news to his mother--it was like disturbing
+the peace of some earthly Eden.
+
+Mrs. Stirling went at once to the hospital with her eldest daughter,
+Bertha. Bart, very anxious and miserable, got the younger boys to bed
+and tried to cheer up his little sister Alice, who was in a transport of
+grief and suspense.
+
+The strain was relieved when Bertha Stirling came home about eleven
+o'clock.
+
+She was in tears, but subdued any active exhibition of emotion until
+Alice, on the assurance that her father was resting comfortably at the
+hospital, was induced to retire.
+
+Then she broke down utterly, and Bart had a hard time keeping her from
+being hysterical.
+
+She said that her mother intended staying all night at the side of her
+suffering husband and had tried to send some reassuring word to her son.
+
+"You must tell me the worst, you know, Bertha," said Bart. "What do
+they say at the hospital? Is father in serious danger? Will he die?"
+
+"No," answered the sobbing girl, "he will not die, but oh! Bart--the
+doctor says he may be blind for life!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+READY FOR BUSINESS
+
+
+Bart Stirling stood ruefully regarding the ruins of the burned express
+shed. It was the Fourth of July, and early as it was, the air was
+resonant with the usual echoes of Independance Day.
+
+Bart, however, was little in harmony with the jollity and excitement of
+the occasion. He had spent a sleepless night, tossing and rolling in bed
+until daybreak, when his mother returned from the hospital.
+
+Mr. Stirling was resting easily, she reported, in very little pain or
+discomfort, but his career of usefulness and work was over--the doctors
+expressed an opinion that he would never regain his eyesight.
+
+Mrs. Stirling was pale and sorrowed. She had grown older in a single
+night, but the calm resignation in her gentle face assured Bart that
+they would be of one mind in taking up their new burdens of life in a
+practical, philosophical way.
+
+"Poor father!" he murmured brokenly. Then he added: "Mother, I want you
+to go in and get some rest, and try not to take this too hard. I will
+attend to everything there is to do about the express office."
+
+"I don't see what there can be to do," she responded in surprise.
+"Everything is burned up, your father will never be able to resume his
+position. We are through with all that, I fancy."
+
+"There is considerable to do," asserted Bart in a definite tone that
+instantly attracted his mother's attention because of its seriousness.
+"Father is a bonded employee of the express service. Their business
+doesn't stop because of an accidental fire, and they have a system to
+look after here that must not be neglected. I know the ropes pretty
+well, thanks to father, and I think it a matter of duty to act just as
+he would were he able to be about, and further and protect the company's
+interests. Outside of that, mother," continued the boy, earnestly, "you
+don't suppose I am going to sit down idly and let things drift at
+haphazard, with the family to take care of and everything to be done to
+make it easy and comfortable for father."
+
+A look of pride came into the mother's face. She completely recognized
+the fidelity and sense of her loyal son, allowed Bart to lead her into
+the house, and tried to be calm and cheerful when he bade her good-bye,
+and, evading celebrating groups of his boy friends, made his way down to
+the ruined express shed.
+
+A heap of still smouldering cinders and ashes marked the site. Bart
+stood silently ruminating for some minutes. He tried to think things out
+clearly, to decide how far he was warranted in acting for his father.
+
+"I don't exactly know what action the express people usually take in a
+case of this kind," he reflected, "nor how soon they get about it. I can
+only wait for some official information. In the meantime, though,
+somebody has got to keep the ball rolling here. I seem to be the only
+one about, and I am going to put the system in some temporary order at
+least. If I'm called down later for being too officious, they can't say
+I didn't try to do my duty."
+
+Bart set briskly at work to put into motion a plan his quick, sensible
+mind had suggested.
+
+About one hundred feet away was a rough unpainted shed-like structure.
+He remembered the time, several years back, when the express office had
+been located there.
+
+It was, however, forty feet from any tracks, and for convenience sake,
+when the railroad gave up the burned building which they had occupied
+for unclaimed freight storage, it had been turned over to the express
+people.
+
+Bart went down to the old quarters. The door had lost its padlock and
+stood half open. Inside was a heap of old boards, and empty boxes and
+barrels thrown there from time to time to keep them from littering the
+yards.
+
+A truck and the little delivery cart, being outside of the burned shed,
+Bart found intact. He ran them down to the building he had determined to
+utilize, temporarily at least, as express headquarters for
+Pleasantville.
+
+The yards were fairly deserted except for a sleepy night watchman here
+and there. It was not yet seven o'clock, but when Bart reached the
+in-freight house he found it open and one or two clerks hurrying through
+their work so as to get off for the day at ten.
+
+There was a good deal of questioning, for they knew of the fire, and
+knew Bart as well, and liked him, and when he made his wants known
+willing hands ministered to his needs.
+
+Bart carried back with him a hammer and some nails, a broom, a marking
+pot and brush, pens, ink and a couple of tabs of paper.
+
+As he neared the switch shanty where Lem Wacker had been on duty the day
+previous, he noticed that it had been opened up since he had passed it
+last. Some one was grumbling noisily inside. Bart was curious for more
+reasons than one.
+
+He placed his load on the bench outside and stuck his head in through
+the open doorway.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Mr. Evans," he hailed, as he recognized the regular
+flagman on duty for whom Wacker had been substituting for three days
+past. "Glad to see you back. Are you all well?"
+
+"Eh? oh, young Stirling. Say, you've had a fire. I hear your father was
+burned."
+
+"He is quite seriously hurt," answered Bart gravely.
+
+"Too bad. I have troubles of my own, though."
+
+"What is the matter, Mr. Evans?"
+
+"Next time I give that lazy, good-for-nothing Lem Wacker work he'll
+know it, I'm thinking! Look there--and there!"
+
+The irate old railroader kicked over the wooden cuspidor in disgust. It
+was loaded to the top with tobacco and cigarette ends. Then he cast out
+half a dozen empty bottles through the open window, and went on with his
+grumbling.
+
+"What he's been up to is more than I can guess," he vociferated. "Look
+at my table there, all burned with matches and covered with burnt cork.
+What's he been doing with burnt cork? Running a minstrel show?"
+
+Bart gave a start. He thought instantly of the black streaked face he
+had tried to survey at the express shed window the night previous.
+
+"My flag's gone, too," muttered old Evans, turning over things in a vain
+search for it. "I'll have a word or two for Lem Wacker when it comes to
+settling day, I'm thinking. He comes up to the house late last night and
+tells me he don't care to work for me any longer."
+
+"Did he?" murmured Bart thoughtfully. "Why not, I wonder?"
+
+"Oh, he flared up big and lofty, and said he had a better job in view."
+
+Bart went on his way surmising a good deal and suspecting more.
+
+He made it a point to pass by the ruins of the old express shed, and he
+found there what he expected to find--the missing flag from the switch
+shanty; only the rod was bare, the little piece of red bunting having
+been burned away.
+
+Bart dismissed this matter from his mind and all other disturbing
+extraneous affairs, massing all his faculties for the time being on
+getting properly equipped for business.
+
+He selected a clean, plain board, and with the marking outfit painted
+across it in six-inch letters that could be plainly read at a distance
+the words:
+
+EXPRESS OFFICE.
+
+This Bart nailed to the door jamb in such a way that it was visible from
+three directions.
+
+Next he started to carry outside and pile neatly at the blind end of the
+building all the boards, boxes and other debris littering up the room,
+swept it, and selected two packing cases and nailed them up into a
+convenient impromptu desk, manufactured a bench seat out of some loose
+boards, set his pen, ink and paper in order, and felt quite ready for
+business.
+
+He had gained a pretty clear idea the day previous from his father as to
+the Fourth of July express service routine.
+
+The fireworks deliveries had been the main thing, but as these had been
+destroyed that part of the programme was off the sheet.
+
+At eight o'clock the morning express would bring in its usual quota, but
+this would be held over until the following day except what was marked
+special or perishable. There would be no out express matter owing to the
+fact that it was a holiday.
+
+"I can manage nicely, I think," Bart told himself, as, an hour later, he
+ran the truck down to the site of the burned express shed and stood by
+the tracks waiting.
+
+A freight engine soon came to the spot, backing down the express car.
+Its engineer halted with a jerk and a vivid:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+He had not heard of the fire, and he stared with interest at the ruins
+as Bart explained that, until some new arrangement was made, express
+shipments would be accepted and loaded by truck.
+
+There were four big freezers of ice cream, one for delivery at the town
+confectioner's, one at the drug store soda fountain, and two for the
+picnic grounds, where an afternoon celebration was on the programme.
+Besides these, there were three packages containing flags and fireworks,
+marked "Delayed--Rush."
+
+He closed the office door, tacked to it a card announcing he would
+return inside of half an hour, and loaded into the wagon the entire
+morning's freight except the two freezers intended for the picnic
+grounds.
+
+These could not be delivered until two o'clock that afternoon, and he
+stowed them in the new express shed, covering them carefully with their
+canvas wrappings.
+
+Bart made a record run in his deliveries. He had formed a rough receipt
+book out of some loose sheets, and when he came back to the office
+filled out his entries in regular form.
+
+Several persons visited the place up to nine o'clock--storekeepers and
+others who had lost their goods in the fire. Bart explained the
+situation, saying that they would probably hear from the express company
+in a day or two regarding their claims.
+
+He found in work something to change his thoughts from a gloomy channel,
+and, while very anxious about his father, was thankful his parent had
+escaped with his life, while he indulged some hopeful and daring plans
+for his own ambitions in the near future.
+
+"I'll stick to my post," he decided. "Some of the express people may
+happen down here any time."
+
+He was making up a list from memory of those in the village whose
+packages had been destroyed by the fire, when two boys crossed the
+threshold of the open doorway, one carrying a thin flat package.
+
+Bart greeted them pleasantly. The elder was Darry Haven, his companion a
+younger brother, Bob, both warm friends of the young express agent.
+
+Darry inquired for Mr. Stirling solicitously, and said his mother was
+then on her way to see Mrs. Stirling, anxious to do anything she could
+to share the lady's troubles. Mr. Haven had been an editor, but his
+health had failed, and Mrs. Haven, having some artistic ability and
+experience, was the main present support of the family, doing
+considerable work for a publishing house in the city in the way of
+illustrations for fashion pages.
+
+Darry had a "rush" package of illustrations under his arm now.
+
+"I suppose we can't get anything through to-day, or until you get things
+in running order again?" he intimated.
+
+"We were sending nothing through on account of the Fourth," explained
+Bart, "but you leave the package here and I will see that it goes on
+the eleven o'clock train."
+
+Bart had just completed the fire-loss list when a heavy step caused him
+to turn around.
+
+A portly, well-dressed man, important-appearing and evidently on
+business, stood in the doorway looking sharply about the place.
+
+"Well!" he uttered, "What's this?"
+
+"The express office," said Bart, arising.
+
+"Oh, it is?" slowly commented the man, "You in charge?"
+
+"Yes, sir," politely answered Bart.
+
+"Set up shop; doing business, eh?"
+
+"Fast as I can," announced Bart.
+
+"Who told you to?" demanded the visitor bending a pair of stern eyes on
+Bart.
+
+"Why do you ask that, may I inquire?" interrogated Bart, pleasantly, but
+standing his ground.
+
+"Ha-hum!" retorted the stranger, "why do ask. Because I am the
+superintendent of the express company, young man, and somewhat
+interested in knowing, I fancy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GETTING "SATISFACTION"
+
+
+Bart did not lose his presence of mind, but he fully realized that he
+faced a critical moment in his career.
+
+Very courteously he drew forward the rude impromptu bench he had knocked
+together two hours before.
+
+"Will you have a seat, sir?" he asked.
+
+The express superintendent did not lose his dignity, but there was a
+slightly humorous twitching at the corners of his mouth.
+
+"Thanks," he said, wearily seating himself on the rude structure.
+"Rather primitive furniture for a big express company, it seems to me."
+
+"It was the best I could provide under the circumstances," explained
+Bart modestly.
+
+"You made this bench, did you?"
+
+Bart acknowledged the imputation with a nod.
+
+"And that--desk, is it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the sign outside, and opened for business?"
+
+"There was no one else on hand. I felt that I must represent my father,
+Mr. Stirling, who is the authorized agent here, until the seriousness of
+his condition was known. You see, there was business likely to come in,
+and I have been here to attend to it."
+
+"Just so," vouchsafed his visitor. "No out shipments to-day, I believe?"
+
+"No, it's a holiday, but there was some rush in stuff on the morning
+express."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"I have delivered most of it--the balance, two freezers of ice cream, I
+will attend to this afternoon. I am keeping a record and taking
+receipts, but giving none--I didn't feel warranted in that until I heard
+from the company."
+
+"You have done very well, young man," said the stranger. "I am Robert
+Leslie, the superintendent, as I told you. Do you mean to say you rigged
+things up in this shape and got your deliveries out alone?"
+
+"There was no one to help me," remarked Bart.
+
+He felt pleased and encouraged, for the superintendent's cast-iron
+visage had softened considerably, and he manifested unmistakable
+interest as he reached out and took up and inspected the neatly
+formulated memoranda on the packing-box desk.
+
+"What's this?" he inquired, running over the pages Bart had last been
+working on.
+
+"That is a list of losers by the fire," explained Bart.
+
+"This is from memory?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Leslie--but I have a good one, and I think the list is
+tolerably correct."
+
+"I am very much pleased," admitted the superintendent--"those claims are
+our main anxiety in a case like this. I understand the contents of the
+safe were destroyed."
+
+"I fear so," assented Bart gravely. "The explosion was so sudden, and my
+father was blinded, so there was no opportunity to close it. I tried to
+reach it after rescuing him, but the flames drove me back."
+
+Mr. Leslie was silent for a few moments. He seemed to be thinking. His
+glance roamed speculatively about the place, taking in the layout
+critically, then finally Bart was conscious that his shrewd, burrowing
+eyes were scanning him closely.
+
+"How old are you, Stirling?" asked the superintendent abruptly.
+
+"Nearly nineteen."
+
+"I suppose you know something about the routine here?"
+
+"I have helped my father a little for the past month or two--yes, sir."
+
+"And have improved your opportunities, judging from the common-sense way
+you have got things into temporary running order," commented Leslie.
+
+The speaker took out his watch. Then, glancing through the doorway, he
+arose suddenly, with the words:
+
+"Ah! there he is, now. I suppose you couldn't be here about four o'clock
+this afternoon?"
+
+"Why, certainly," answered Bart promptly. "People are likely to be
+around making inquiries, and I have a delivery to make this afternoon,
+as I told you, sir."
+
+"I intend to see your father," said Mr. Leslie, "and I want to get back
+to the city to-night. I may have some orders for you, so we'll call it
+four, sharp."
+
+"I will be here, sir."
+
+The superintendent stepped outside. Evidently he had made an
+appointment, for he was met by the freight agent of the B. & M., who
+knew Bart and nodded to him.
+
+As the two men strolled slowly over to the ruins of the express shed,
+Bart heard Mr. Leslie remark:
+
+"That's a smart boy in there."
+
+"And a good one," supplemented the freight agent.
+
+Bart experienced a thrill of pleasure at the homely compliment. He tried
+to get back to business, but he found himself considerably flustered.
+
+All the morning his hopes and plans had drifted in one definite
+direction--to get some assurance of permanent employment for the future.
+
+The only work he had ever done was here at the express office for his
+father. It was a daring prospect to imagine that he, a mere boy, would
+be allowed to succeed to a grown man's position and salary--and yet Bart
+had placed himself in line for it with every prompting of diligence and
+duty.
+
+Mr. Leslie and the freight agent spent half an hour at the ruins. Bart
+could see by their gestures that they were animatedly discussing the
+situation, and they seemed to be closely looking over the ground with a
+view to locating a site for a new express shed.
+
+Finally they shook hands in parting. The express superintendent
+consulted his watch, and turned his face in the direction of Bart.
+
+As he neared the "new" express shed, however, he passed around to its
+rear, and glancing out of a window there Bart saw that he had come to a
+halt, and was drawing a diagram of the tracks on a blank page in his
+memorandum book.
+
+Just as Mr. Leslie had returned this to his pocket and was about to
+start from the spot, a man hailed him. It was Lem Wacker. He was dressed
+in his best, but the effort was spoiled by an uncertainty of gait, and
+his face was suspiciously flushed.
+
+"Did you address me?" inquired the superintendent in a chilling tone.
+
+Lem was not daunted by the imposing presence or the dignified demeanor
+of the speaker.
+
+"Sure," he answered, unabashed. "You're Leslie, ain't you?"
+
+"I am Mr. Leslie, yes," corrected the superintendent, his stern brow
+contracted in a frown.
+
+"They told me I'd find you here. My name's Wacker. Knew your cousin down
+at Rochelle; we worked on the same desk in the freight house. Had many
+a drink with Ted Leslie."
+
+"What do you want?" challenged the superintendent, turning on his heel.
+
+"Why, it's this way," explained the dauntless Lem: "I'm an old
+railroader and a handy man of experience, I am, and I wanted to make a
+proposition to you. You see--"
+
+Bart lost the remainder of Mr. Lem Wacker's proposition, for Mr. Leslie
+had started forward impatiently, with Lem persistently following in his
+wake. He was still keeping up the pursuit and importuning the affronted
+official as both were lost to view behind a track of freights.
+
+Bart of course surmised that Lem Wacker was on the trail of the "better
+job" he had announced he was after to the old switchman, Evans.
+
+"I don't think he has made a very promising impression," decided Bart,
+as he got back to his writing.
+
+"Say, you!"
+
+Bart looked up a trifle startled at the sharp hail, ten minutes later.
+He had been engrossed in his work and had not noticed an intruder.
+
+Lem Wacker stood just in the doorway. He looked flushed, excited and
+vicious.
+
+"What can I do for you, Mr. Wacker?" inquired Bart calmly, though
+scenting trouble in the air.
+
+"You can undo!" flared out Wacker, "and you'll get quick action on it,
+or I'll clean you out, bag and baggage."
+
+"There isn't much baggage here to clean out," suggested Bart humorously,
+"and as for the rest of it I'll try to take care of it myself."
+
+"Oh! you will, will you?" sneered Lem, lurching to and fro. "You're a
+sneak. Bart Stirling--a low, contemptible sneak, that's what you are!"
+
+"I would like to have you explain," remarked Bart.
+
+"You've queered me!" roared Wacker, "and I'm going to have
+satisfaction--yes, sir. Sat-is-fac-tion!"
+
+He pounded out the syllables under Bart's very nose with resounding
+thumps, bringing down his fist on the impromptu office desk so forcibly
+that the concussion disturbed the papers on it, and several sheets fell
+fluttering to the floor.
+
+Bart's patience was tried. His eyes flashed, but he stooped and picked
+up the pages and replaced them on the dry goods box.
+
+"Don't you do that again," he warned in a strained tone.
+
+"Why!" yelled Wacker, rolling up his cuffs.
+
+"I'll trim you next! 'Don't-do-it-again!' eh? Boo! bah!"
+
+Lem raised his foot and kicked over the desk, papers and all.
+
+"That's express company property," observed Bart quietly, but his blood
+was up, the limit reached. "Get out!"
+
+One arm shot forward, and the clenched muscular fist rested directly
+under the chin of the astounded Lem Wacker.
+
+"And stay out."
+
+Lem Wacker felt a smart whack, went whirling back over the threshold,
+and the next instant measured his length, sprawling on the ground
+outside of the express shed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WAITING FOR TROUBLE
+
+
+Lem Wacker rolled over, then sat up, rubbed his head in a half-dazed
+manner, and muttered in a silly, sheepish way.
+
+"Lem Wacker," said Bart, "I have got just a few words to say to you, and
+that ends matters between us. I am sorry I had to strike you, but I will
+have no man interfering with the express company's affairs. I want you
+to go away, and if you ever come in here again except on business
+strictly there will be trouble."
+
+Lem did not put up much of a belligerent front, though he tried still to
+look ugly and dangerous.
+
+He got his balance at last, and extended his finger at our hero.
+
+"Bart Stirling," he maundered, "you've made an enemy for life. Look out
+for me! You're a marked man after this."
+
+"What am I marked with," inquired Bart quickly--"burnt cork?"
+
+"Hey! What?" blurted out Lem, and Bart saw that the shot had struck the
+target. Wacker looked sickly, and muttered something to himself. Then he
+took himself off.
+
+Bart's worries were pleasantly broken in upon by the arrival of his
+sister Bertha. She brought him a generous lunch, the first food Bart had
+tasted that day, and his appetite welcomed it in a wholesome way.
+
+He put in the time planning what he would do if he was lucky enough to
+be retained in his father's position, and what he might do in case
+someone else was appointed.
+
+At half-past two Bart loaded the two ice cream freezers on the cart and
+started for the picnic grounds.
+
+Juvenile Pleasantville had somewhat subsided for a time in the fervor of
+its patriotism. There was a lull in the popping and banging, nearly
+everybody in town being due at the time-honored celebration in the
+picnic grove.
+
+When Bart reached the grove, someone was making an address, and he
+piloted his way circumspectly up to the side of the platform where the
+speaking was going on.
+
+He deposited the freezers inside the bunting-decorated inclosure, where
+half a dozen young ladies were posted to dispense the refreshments after
+the literary programme was finished.
+
+Bart started to return with his empty cart the way he had come, but
+about ten feet from the platform paused for a moment to take in the
+exceptionally flowery sentiment that was being enunciated by the speaker
+of the day.
+
+Colonel Harrington, it seemed, was the self-appointed hero of the
+occasion. The great man of the village was in his element--the eyes and
+ears of all Pleasantville fixed upon him.
+
+In rolling tones and with magnificent gestures he was paying a lofty
+tribute to the immortal Stars and Stripes waving just over his head,
+when, his eyes lowering, they focused straight in a fixed stare on Bart.
+
+The colonel gave the young express agent an awful look, and in an
+instant Bart knew that the military man had been informed of the
+identity of the audacious cannoneer of the evening previous.
+
+Like some orators, the colonel, once disturbed by an extraneous
+contemplation, lost his voice, cue and self-possession all in a second.
+
+It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from the innocent and
+embarrassed author of his distraction.
+
+He spluttered, the rounded sentence on his lips died down to measly
+insignificance, he stammered, stumbled, and sat down with a red face,
+his eyes darting rage at poor Bart.
+
+Some of the boys in the crowd "caught on" to the situation, and giggled
+and made significant remarks, but the chairman on the platform covered
+the colonel's confusion by announcing the national anthem, and Bart
+effected his escape.
+
+"He'll never forgive me, now," decided Bart. "The damage to the statue
+was bad enough, but breaking him up as my appearance did just now is the
+limit. I hope Mr. Leslie doesn't hear of my unfortunate escapade, and I
+hope the colonel doesn't undertake to hurt my chances. He's an
+irrational firebrand when he takes a dislike to anybody, and Mrs.
+Harrington is worse."
+
+Bart had a foundation for this double criticism. The colonel was a
+pompous, self-important individual, intensely selfish and domineering,
+and his wife a thoughtless devotee of fashion and society.
+
+Mrs. Stirling did some very fine fancy work, and a few months previous
+to the opening of this tale the magnate's wife had asked as a favor
+that she embroider some handkerchiefs as a wedding present for a
+relative.
+
+She never visited the Stirling house but she left some sting or sneer of
+affected superiority behind her, and when the work was done took it
+home, and the next day sent a note complaining that the handkerchiefs
+were spoiled, inclosing about one-fifth the usual compensation for such
+labor. But she did not return the handkerchiefs.
+
+Mrs. Stirling later learned that their recipient had expressed herself
+perfectly delighted with the delicate, beautiful gift, but, being a true
+lady, Bart's mother said nothing about the matter to those who would
+have been glad to spread a little gossip unfavorable to the dowdy
+society queen of Pleasantville.
+
+The village hardware store was open for the sale of powder, and Bart
+stopped there on his way back to the express office and purchased a
+padlock, two keys fitting it, and some stout staples and a hasp. He
+carried these articles into the office when he reached it.
+
+The thoughts of his father's plight, a haunting dread that Colonel
+Harrington might make him some trouble, and the uncertainty of continued
+work in the express service, all combined to depress his mind with
+anxiety and suspense, and he tried to dismiss the themes by whistling a
+quiet, soothing tune as he started to get the hammer to put the padlock
+in place.
+
+The minute he opened the door, however, the whistle was instantly
+checked, and a quick glance at the impromptu desk told Bart that the
+place had welcomed a visitor since he had left it.
+
+On a sheet of blank paper was scrawled the words: "Express safe was
+locked last night--contents all right."
+
+And beside it was a heap of account books--the entire records of the
+office, which Bart had supposed were destroyed in the fire at the old
+express shed the evening previous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE YOUNG EXPRESS AGENT
+
+
+Our hero regarded the little pile of account books as if they
+represented some long-lost, newly-found treasure.
+
+He was very much astonished at their presence there. They were a
+tangible reality, however, and no delusion of the senses, and his ready
+mind took in the fact that someone had in an unaccountable manner
+rescued them from the burning express shed, and mysteriously restored
+them to the proper representative of the express company in the nature
+of a vast surprise.
+
+The edges of one of the books was scorched, which was the only evidence
+that they had been in the flames.
+
+They were all there, and Bart was very glad. He now had in his
+possession every record of the transactions of the Pleasantville express
+office since the last New Year's day.
+
+"And the contents of the safe are all right, too, that writing says!"
+exclaimed Bart; "now what does all this mean?"
+
+The handwriting of the announcement was crude and labored, and the boy
+felt sure he had never seen it before.
+
+He glanced with some excitement at the ruins of the old express shed,
+then he went over there. The embers had died down entirely, and the mass
+of ashes and debris was sparkless and cold.
+
+Bart went to a near railroad scrap heap and selected a long iron rod
+crowbar crooked at the end. He returned to the ruins and began poking
+the debris aside. He was thus engaged when some trackmen, lounging the
+day away over on a freight platform, sauntered up to the spot.
+
+"Why don't you work holidays, Stirling?" asked one of them satirically.
+
+"Somebody has got to work to get this mess in shipshape order," retorted
+Bart. "The writing said what was true!" he spoke to himself, as his
+pokings cleared a broad iron surface. "The safe door is shut."
+
+The safe lay flat on its back where it had fallen when the floor had
+burned away. It was an old-fashioned affair with a simple combination
+attachment, and so far as Bart could make out had suffered no damage
+beyond having its coat of lacquer and gilt lettering burned off.
+
+He leaned over and felt of its surface, which retained scarcely any heat
+now.
+
+"We heard the old iron box was caught open by the fire and everything in
+it burned up," spoke one of the trackmen.
+
+"I supposed so myself," said Bart, "but it seems otherwise. I wonder how
+heavy it is?"
+
+"Wait till I get some tackle," said one of the workmen.
+
+He went away and returned with two crowbars and a pulley and block
+tackle.
+
+It was no work at all for those stout, experienced fellows to get the
+safe clear of the ruins, and, with the aid of a big truck they brought
+from the freight house, convey it to the new express quarters.
+
+Just as the town bell rang out four o'clock, Mr. Leslie stepped over the
+threshold.
+
+He glanced about the place briskly, gave a start as he noticed the heap
+of account books at Bart's elbow, and looked both pleased and puzzled as
+his eyes lighted on the safe.
+
+"Why, Stirling!" he exclaimed, "are you a wizard?"
+
+"Not quite," replied Bart with a smile, "but someone else seems to be."
+
+"Are those the office books we thought burned up, and the safe?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How is this?"
+
+Bart told of the mysterious return of the books and of the scrap of
+writing that had led him to dig up the safe.
+
+"That's a pretty strange circumstance," observed Mr. Leslie
+thoughtfully. "How do you account for it?"
+
+"I can't," admitted Bart, "except to theorize, of course, that someone
+had enough interest in myself or the company to rush into the burning
+shed and save the books and close the safe while I was getting my father
+to safety."
+
+"That's rational, but who was it?" persisted Mr. Leslie.
+
+"Whoever it was," said Bart, "he has certainly proved himself a good,
+true friend."
+
+"Have you no idea who it is?" challenged Mr. Leslie sharply.
+
+Bart hesitated for a moment.
+
+"Why, yes," he admitted finally. "I am pretty sure who it is. I do not
+know his name, but I have seen him several times," and Bart thought it
+best to reveal to his superior all he knew about the roustabout who had
+warned him of the burglary, who had assisted him in rescuing his father
+from the burning express shed, and who had vanished suddenly as people
+began to crowd to the scene of the blaze.
+
+"I would like to meet that man!" commented Mr. Leslie.
+
+"I hardly think that possible," explained Bart. "He seems to be afraid
+to face the open daylight, and, as you see, has not even manifested
+himself to me, except in a covert way."
+
+"He is some poor unfortunate in trouble," said the superintendent. "If
+you do see him, Stirling, give him that--from the express company."
+
+Bart was sure that his mysterious friend could be no other than the
+roustabout. He took the crisp ten-dollar bill, which the superintendent
+extended with an impetuousness that showed he was a genuine,
+warm-hearted man under the surface.
+
+"That quarter of a dollar you gave him was a grand investment, Stirling.
+And now to get down to business, for I haven't much time to spare."
+
+The superintendent, seating himself on the bench, consulted his watch
+and fixed his glance on Bart in his former stern, practical way.
+
+"I saw your father at the hospital," he announced.
+
+"Yes, sir?" murmured Bart anxiously.
+
+"They are going to let him go home to-morrow. I am very sorry for his
+misfortune. He is an old and reliable employee of the express company,
+and we will find it difficult to replace him. I have thought over a
+suggestion he made, and have decided to offer you his position."
+
+"Oh, sir! I thank you," said Bart spontaneously, and the tears of
+gladness and pride sprang to his eyes uncontrollably.
+
+"Technically your father will appear in our service. I do not think the
+company bonding him will refuse to continue to be his surety. You must
+make your own arrangement as to legally representing him, signing his
+name and the like, and of course you will have to do all the work, for
+he will be helpless for some time to come. Are you willing to undertake
+the responsibility?"
+
+"Gladly."
+
+"Then that is settled. This arrangement will be in force for sixty days.
+If, at the end of that time your father is no better, I do not doubt
+that we will give you the regular appointment, if in the meantime you
+fill the bill acceptably."
+
+"I shall do my best."
+
+"And I believe you will succeed. I like you, Stirling," said Mr. Leslie
+frankly, "and I am greatly pleased at the way you have stood in the
+breach at a critical time, and protected the company's interests. You
+will continue to draw fifty-five dollars a month, and use your judgment
+in incurring any expense necessary to keep things running smoothly until
+we get a new express office built. What is in the safe?"
+
+Bart was familiar with its contents. He itemized them, including some
+fifty unclaimed parcels of small bulk that had accumulated during the
+year.
+
+"Get rid of all that stuff," ordered the superintendent briskly. "I
+shall advise all the small offices in this division to ship in all their
+uncalled-for matter. Advertise a sale, make your returns to the company,
+and start with a new sheet. I think that is all there is any need of
+discussing at present, but I will send instructions by wire or mail as
+the occasion comes up. Count me your friend as long as you show the true
+manhood you have displayed to-day in a situation that would have rattled
+and frightened most boys--and grown men, too. Good-by."
+
+He was keen, practical business to the core, and no sentiment about him,
+for he arose promptly with the farewell words, shook hands with Bart in
+an off-hand way, and was gone like a flash to catch his train to the
+city.
+
+Bart stood for a moment in a kind of daze. The congratulatory words of
+the superintendent, and the appointment to the position of agent,
+stirred the dearest desires of his heart.
+
+His great good fortune momentarily overwhelmed him, and he stood staring
+silently after the superintendent in a grand dream of opulence and
+ambition.
+
+"I want you!" spoke a harsh, sudden voice, and Bart Stirling came out of
+dreamland with a shock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+COLONEL JEPTHA HARRINGTON
+
+
+The young express agent recognized the tones before he saw the speaker's
+face. Only one person in Pleasantville had that mixture of lofty command
+and tragic emphasis, and that was Colonel Jeptha Harrington.
+
+As Bart turned, he saw the village magnate ten feet away, planted like a
+rock, and extending his big golden-headed cane as if it was a spear and
+he was poising to immediately impale a victim. The colonel's brow was a
+veritable thundercloud.
+
+"Yes, sir," announced Bart promptly--"what can I do for you?"
+
+Bart did not get excited in the least. He looked so cool and collected
+that the colonel ground his teeth, stamped his foot and advanced
+swinging his cane alarmingly.
+
+"I've come to see you--" he began, and choked on the words.
+
+"May I ask what for?" interrogated Bart.
+
+Colonel Harrington shook, as he placed his cane under his arm and took
+out his big plethoric wallet.
+
+He selected a strip of paper and held it between his forefinger and
+thumb.
+
+"Young man," he observed, "do you know what that is?"
+
+Bart shook his head.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, it's a bill, do you hear? a bill. It's for
+eighty-five dollars, damage done maliciously on my private grounds,
+yesterday evening. It represents the bare cost of a new copper pedestal
+to replace the one you shot to pieces last night, and it's a wonder you
+are not in jail for murder, for had that cannon ball struck a human
+being--Enough! before I take up this outrage with the district attorney
+in its criminal phase, are you going to settle the damage, or are you
+not?"
+
+"Colonel Harrington, I haven't got eighty-five dollars."
+
+"Then get it!" snapped the Colonel.
+
+"Nor can I get it."
+
+"Then," observed the colonel, restoring the bit of paper to his
+pocket--"go to jail!"
+
+Bart regarded his enemy dumbly. Colonel Harrington was a power in
+Pleasantville, his will and his way were paramount there.
+
+"I am sorry," said Bart finally, in a tone of genuine distress, "but
+eighty-five dollars is a sheer impossibility--in cash. If you would
+listen to me--"
+
+"But I shan't!"
+
+"I would like to offer payment or replace the pedestal on reasonable
+terms."
+
+"It don't go!"
+
+"And, further, I am not to blame in the matter."
+
+"What!" roared the colonel "what's that?"
+
+"It's the truth," asserted Bart. "I never knew the cannon was loaded
+with a ball."
+
+"Do you know who loaded it?"
+
+Bart was silent.
+
+"You won't tell? We'll see if a jury can't make you, then!" fumed the
+colonel. "Aha! it's serious now, is it? Not so much fun breaking up my
+home and breaking up my speech at the grove to-day, hey?"
+
+Bart saw very plainly that what rankled most with his volcanic visitor
+was the blow to his pride he had suffered that afternoon at the grove.
+
+"You put me in a nice fix, didn't you?" cried the colonel--"laughing
+stock of the community! Young man, you're on the downward road, fast.
+You're all of a brood. Your mother--"
+
+Bart started forward with a dangerous sparkle in his eye.
+
+"Colonel Harrington," he said decisively, "my mother has nothing to do
+with this affair."
+
+"She has!" vociferated the magnate, "or rather, her teachings. You're
+full of infernal pride and presumption, the whole kit of you!"
+
+"We have our rights."
+
+"I'm a stockholder in the B. & M., and I fancy my influence will reach
+the express service. You'll stay in your present job just long enough
+for me to advise your employers of your true character."
+
+Bart was dismayed--that threat touched him to the quick. He had felt
+very glad that Mr. Leslie had not met the irate colonel. The
+mean-spirited magnate noted instantly the effect of his threat.
+
+"You'll insult and defy me, will you?" he cried, with a gloating
+chuckle. "Very well--you take your medicine, that's all."
+
+Bart could hardly control his voice, but he said simply:
+
+"Colonel Harrington, my father has been blinded at his post of duty. I
+am the sole support of the family. I hope you will pause and consider
+before you plunge us into new trouble and distress that we do not
+deserve. I have never had the remotest thought of injuring you or your
+property in any way. I am willing to make all the amends I am able for
+the accidental damage to your property, but I can't and won't cringe to
+your injustice, nor grovel at your feet."
+
+"Eighty-five dollars--one, the name of the person who loaded that
+cannon--two, C.O.D. before ten o'clock to-morrow morning, or I'll sweep
+you off the map!" shouted the colonel.
+
+He marched off, puffing up as his vain senses were tickled with the
+fancy that he was a born orator, and had just given utterance to some
+profoundly apt and clever sentiments. Bart stared after him in sheer
+dismay.
+
+"It's a bad outlook," he murmured, "but--I have tried to do my duty. I
+would like to have money and influence, but would rather be plain Bart
+Stirling than that man. He is coming back."
+
+Bart thought this, for, just about to round the end of a dead freight
+and cross to the public street, his late visitor turned abruptly.
+
+He did not, however, retrace his steps. Instead, he came to the
+strangest rigid pose Bart had ever seen a human being assume.
+
+He stood staring, spellbound, at the partly open door of the nearest
+freight car. His cane had fallen from his hand, his head was thrown up
+as if he had been struck a stunning blow under the chin, and even at the
+distance he was, Bart could see that his usually red-puffed face was the
+color of chalk. Almost immediately, through the open doorway space of
+the freight car an arm was protruded.
+
+Its index finger was pointed, inflexible as an iron rod, directly at the
+colonel. It fascinated and transfixed the military man, and Bart
+Stirling, staring also at the strange tableau, was overcome with
+perplexity and mystification.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+QUEER COMRADES
+
+
+So many sensational occurrences had marked the last twenty-four hours of
+Bart Stirling's career, that it seemed as though the accumulating series
+would never end.
+
+It was a particularly ragged and miserable-looking arm, and why it could
+so summarily check, halt and hold the great magnate of Pleasantville,
+was the problem that now tried Bart's reasoning faculties.
+
+Bart closed the door of the express office and stepped out to where he
+could get a clearer view of the colonel and his environment.
+
+Suddenly the strain was removed. The colonel threw up his arms with a
+gasp. He started to turn around, clutched at his neck in a strangling
+kind of a way, tottered, reeled, and plunged forward on his face against
+a heap of cinders.
+
+"This is serious," murmured Bart.
+
+He rapidly covered the two hundred foot space between the express shed
+and the freight car.
+
+"Colonel--Colonel Harrington!" he called in some alarm, kneeling by the
+prostrate body of his enemy.
+
+Bart tried to pull him over on his back. As he partially succeeded, he
+noticed that the colonel's face was pitted, and in one or two places
+scratched and bleeding from contact with the cinder particles.
+
+The bulky form was quivering and convulsed. The colonel had been dazed,
+it seemed, but not rendered entirely unconscious, for now with a groan
+he struggled to a sitting posture.
+
+Bart drew out his handkerchief and tried to clean the dirt from the
+military man's face.
+
+The colonel resisted, he swayed and mumbled. Then he groaned again as
+his eyes lit on the freight car.
+
+"Get me away from here," he moaned--"get me away! What's happened to
+me?"
+
+"That is what I was going to ask you," said Bart. "Don't you know?"
+
+The colonel passed his hand over his face and mumbled, but made no
+coherent reply.
+
+Bart glanced at the freight car. It afforded no evidence of present
+occupancy. He reflected for moment.
+
+"Wait for just two minutes," he directed.
+
+Running over to the drug store on the next street, he spoke a few words
+to the man in charge, and darted out again as the druggist hurried to
+his telephone to call up the livery stable.
+
+When he got back to the colonel, Bart found the latter sitting propped
+up against the cinder heap, his eyes open, and breathing heavily, but
+still in a helpless kind of a daze.
+
+He worked over the colonel, and finally got the man on his feet. His
+position was so unsteady, however, that he had to support him with one
+hand while he dusted off his clothes with the other.
+
+As he stood trying to keep his charge on his feet, a cab rushed across
+the tracks. Its driver, bluff Bill Carey, nodded familiarly to Bart, and
+looked the colonel over critically. He got the latter into the cab in an
+experienced way.
+
+"Same old complaint!" he intimated to Bart with a wink. "Drinks pretty
+heavily."
+
+Bart leaned over into the cab.
+
+"Colonel Harrington," he said, "do you wish to be driven home?"
+
+The colonel gave him a fishy stare, groaned and put out a wavering hand.
+
+"Come," he mumbled.
+
+"Jump in," directed Carey. "You'll be useful explaining the 'fall' up at
+the house!"
+
+As they went on their way, the young express agent experienced a
+striking sensation.
+
+A topsy-turvy day of excitement was ending with the peculiar combination
+of his riding in the same carriage with his most bitter enemy, and
+acting the good Samaritan.
+
+They proceeded slowly, or rather cautiously, for the popping and banging
+had recommenced all over town.
+
+Carey had to keep the spirited horses in strong check as they passed
+groups of boys, reckless of the quantity of firecrackers they
+deliberately fired off as the team neared them.
+
+Suddenly the horses were pulled to their haunches with a vociferous
+shout. The cab swerved and creaked, and the horses' hoofs beat an
+alarming tattoo on the cobblestones.
+
+"Whoa! whoa!" yelled Bill Carey. "You young villains! get that infernal
+machine out of the way. Can't you see--"
+
+Bart stuck his head out of the cab window to view an animated scene.
+
+A fourteen-inch cannon cracker was hissing and spitting out smoke barely
+two feet ahead of the terrified horses in the middle of the street.
+
+At that moment it exploded. The horses gave a wild snort, a frightened
+jerk at the reins.
+
+Bart saw the staunch driver dragged from his seat. He lit on his feet,
+braced, but was pulled over, as, with a fierce tug, the horses snapped
+the line in two.
+
+Then, unrestrained, the team shot down the street without guide or
+hindrance and with the speed of the wind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"FORGET IT!"
+
+
+The young express agent acted quickly. A single glance told him that the
+driver of the cab could do nothing.
+
+The frightened horses were speeding ahead at a furious rate, could not
+be overtaken, and Bart doubted if anyone could stop them.
+
+No one tried, but all got out of the way promptly as the team went
+tearing along. The horses came to a crossing, and, terrified anew at a
+spitting "Vesuvius" ahead, abruptly veered and turned down a side lane.
+
+It was at this moment that Bart threw open the door of the cab, grasped
+a handle at the side of the vehicle, and drew himself up to the driver's
+seat.
+
+The swing the horses made just then sent his feet flying out in a wild
+circle, but he held on, and the rebound landed him on the seat.
+
+Our hero cast a quick look within the vehicle. The colonel had
+"rousted" up somewhat. Buffeted from side to side by the erratic and
+violent movements of the horses, he was trying to maintain his balance
+by frantically clinging with both hands to the cushion under him.
+
+As a wheel struck a stone the jar drove him forward. His head smashed
+out the front glass, and he uttered a yell of fear.
+
+"Don't stir--don't jump!" shouted Bart through the opening thus made.
+
+"We'll be killed!" cried the man.
+
+"No, we won't. Do as I say. I'm on deck, and I'll--"
+
+Bart sized up the situation, counted its risks and possibilities, and
+described a sudden forward leap.
+
+The lines were torn and trailing under the horses' feet. He cut the air
+in a reckless, but well planned dive.
+
+Bart landed sprawling between the two horses, his knee striking the
+carriage pole.
+
+Bracing himself there, he caught out at the head of either horse. With a
+firm grip his fingers closed on the bridle reins.
+
+Ahead was a stony wagon track lining a deep gravel pit dangerously near
+its edge.
+
+About a hundred feet further on ran the creek, sunk between banks some
+fifteen feet high.
+
+Bart drew the bridles taut. He feared the tremendous strain would break
+them. The heads of the horses were now held as in a vice, but they
+snorted and continued to plunge forward with undiminished speed.
+
+As a wheel landed in a rut full of thick mud, their pace was momentarily
+retarded. Bart jerked at the bridles. The horses paused fully, but
+pranced and backed.
+
+"Jump--crawl out--quick, now!" shouted Bart breathlessly to the occupant
+of the cab.
+
+The colonel had been bouncing around, groaning and yelling ever since he
+had awakened to a realization of his desperate plight.
+
+"Wait a minute!" he puffed. "Gently! Wait till I get out. Then you can
+go on," was his remarkable concession.
+
+Bart saw the bulky body of the magnate fall, rather than step from the
+vehicle. He landed clumsily at the side of the road, rolled up like a
+ball, but unhurt.
+
+He was so near to the grinding wheels of the vehicle and kicking hoofs
+of the horses that Bart relaxed the bridles.
+
+Instantly the horses sprang forward again, but, once clear of the
+colonel's prostrate body, Bart focused his strength on a final mastery
+of the maddened steeds.
+
+He drew the bridles at a sharp, taut slant that must have cut their
+mouths fearfully at the tenderest part, for they fairly screamed with
+pain and terror.
+
+He succeeded in facing them sideways, ran their heads into some brush,
+vaulted over them, and, landing safely on his feet in front of them,
+grabbed them near the bits and held them snorting and trembling at a
+standstill.
+
+Then he unshipped one of the lines and tied it around a sapling, stroked
+the horse's heads, and succeeded in quieting them down.
+
+Going back to the road, he discerned Colonel Harrington sitting up
+rubbing his head and staring about abstractedly.
+
+Farther away was a flying excited figure. Bart recognized the
+disenthroned cabman. They met where the colonel sat.
+
+"All gone to smash, I suppose!" hailed Carey.
+
+"No, a window broken, wheels scraped a little--nothing worse," reported
+Bart.
+
+"Where is the team?" panted Carey.
+
+Bart pointed and explained, and the cabman forged ahead with a gratified
+snort.
+
+"You stuck till you landed 'em," applauded Carey. "Stirling, you're
+nerve all through!"
+
+Bart went up to Colonel Harrington and the latter got on his feet. Bart
+could see that either the druggist's potion or his succeeding violent
+experience had quite restored the magnate to his original self. He
+nursed a slight abrasion on his chin, looked at Bart sheepishly, and
+then stepped over to a big bowlder and rested against it.
+
+"Are you feeling all right now, Colonel Harrington?" asked Bart
+courteously.
+
+"Me? Now? Ah yes! Quite--er--er--thank you."
+
+Bart was somewhat astonished at the words and manner of his whilom
+enemy.
+
+Colonel Harrington looked positively embarrassed. He would glance at
+Bart, start to speak, lower his eyes, and, turning pale as he seemed to
+remember, and turning red as he seemed to realize, would fumble at his
+watch fob, run his fingers through his hair and act flustered generally.
+
+"The cab will be back in a few minutes," remarked Bart. "It was a pretty
+bad shaking up, but I hope you are none the worse for it. Good day,
+Colonel Harrington."
+
+Bart turned to leave. He heard the colonel spluttering.
+
+"Hold on," ordered the magnate. "I want to give you--I want to give
+you--some money," he observed.
+
+"I can't take it, Colonel Harrington," said Bart definitely. "If I have
+been of service to you I am glad, but you will remember I was in the
+same danger as yourself, and quite anxious to save my own skin."
+
+"Bosh! I mean--maybe," retorted the colonel, getting bombastic, and then
+humble.
+
+"Well, put up your money, Colonel," advised Bart. "As I say, if I have
+been of service to you I am glad."
+
+"You hold on!" ordered Colonel Harrington, as Bart again moved to leave
+the spot.
+
+The speaker poked in his wallet and brought out a strip of paper, which
+Bart recognized as the one he had so menacingly waved in his face an
+hour previous at the express shed.
+
+Colonel Harrington again poked about in his pockets till he found a
+pencil. With somewhat unsteady fingers he inscribed his name at the
+bottom of the paper, and handed it to Bart.
+
+"You take that," he directed.
+
+"Why, this is a receipted bill for the damage done to your statue," said
+Bart.
+
+"Eighty-five dollars--just so."
+
+"But I haven't paid it!"
+
+"You needn't. Serious mistake--I see that," said the colonel. "That is,
+I see it now. Satisified you didn't mean any harm. Sick of whole muddle.
+And about getting you discharged and all that rot--didn't mean it.
+Forget it! Was a little mad and excited; see!"
+
+"I can't take your receipt for what I haven't paid, and what I am
+willing to pay as fast as I can," said Bart.
+
+"Then tear it up--I won't take a cent!" declared Colonel Harrington
+obstinately.
+
+"The cab is coming," remarked Bart. "Shall Mr. Carey drive you home?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. Come here, quick!"
+
+He grabbed Bart's arm and drew our hero close up to him, as though he
+had some pressing intelligence to impart before the cab interrupted.
+
+"Forget it!" he whispered hoarsely.
+
+"About the statue--I'll be glad to," said Bart frankly.
+
+"No--no, the--the--"
+
+"Runaway? I shall not mention it, Colonel Harrington."
+
+The colonel released Bart's arm, but with a desperate groan. It was
+evident he was not fully satisfied.
+
+"Sure you'll forget It!" he persisted, very much perturbed. "I don't
+mean my abusing you, or the runaway, or--or--I mean I had an accident
+after I left you at the express office. Someone hailed me--but you know,
+you know!"
+
+The colonel cast a penetrating look on Bart, who shook his head
+negatively.
+
+"I don't know, Colonel," he declared.
+
+"Oh, come, now!" croaked the colonel, making a ghastly attempt to give
+the statement the aspect of a joke. Honest, you didn't hear anyone call
+to me?"
+
+"No," replied Bart.
+
+The cab drove up and halted.
+
+"Don't do any talking. Don't start any gossip about--about--of course
+you won't! I've got your word. You're a truthful, reliable boy,
+Stirling, and I--I respect you," stumbled on the colonel. "Mum's the
+word, and I'll--I'll make you no trouble, see?"
+
+"Thank you, Colonel Harrington," said Bart in a queer tone.
+
+The colonel again regarded him penetratingly, and then got into the cab.
+He took the trouble of leaning out and waving his hand as the vehicle
+started up. He smiled in a sickly way at Bart, and once made a movement
+as if inclined to get out and once more suggest to the young express
+agent that he "forget it."
+
+"That man is scared half to death over something," reflected Bart, as he
+took a short cut to regain the express office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS MR. BAKER
+
+
+The little express office looked good to Bart as its precincts again
+sheltered him.
+
+Things appeared better and clearer to him now than at any time during
+the past twenty-four hours, and his heart warmed up as he put his papers
+and books in order, saw that the safe was secured, and decided to close
+up business for the day.
+
+Doctor Griscom from the hospital had dropped in for a few moments, and
+brought some news that lifted something of a cloud from the heart of the
+young express agent.
+
+"I do not want to hold out any false hopes," he told Bart, "but there is
+a bare possibility that your father may not become totally blind."
+
+"That is blessed news!" cried Bart fervently.
+
+"It is all a question of time, and after that of skill," continued the
+surgeon. "Your father must have absolute rest and cheerful, comfortable
+surroundings; above all, peace of mind. I shall watch his case, and when
+I see the first indication of the services of some skilled specialist
+being of benefit to him I will tell you. It will cost you some money,
+but I will do all I can to make the expert reasonable in his charges."
+
+"Don't think of that," said Bart impetuously. "With such a hope in view
+I am willing to work my finger ends off!"
+
+Bart was, therefore, in high spirits as he left the express office,
+padlocking the door securely.
+
+He was anxious to get home and then to the hospital, to impart to his
+mother and father in turn the assurance that they had a bread-winner
+able to work and glad to do so for their benefit.
+
+Amid the buoyancy of the relief from the continuous strain and troubles
+of the day, Bart was bent on a quick dash for home when he remembered
+something that changed his plan.
+
+"The roustabout, the poor fellow that I've got the ten dollars for, the
+good fellow, if I don't mistake, who saved the books and the contents of
+the safe!" exclaimed Bart. "Actually, I had forgotten all about him for
+the moment."
+
+Bart stood still thinking, looking around speculatively, his fingers
+mechanically touching the bank note in his pocket which Mr. Leslie had
+given him in trust.
+
+He did not reflect long. He went at once to the freight car whence he
+had seen the ragged arm extended two hours previous, and looked in.
+
+Back at one end were some broken grapevine crates, and it was dim and
+shadowy there, so he called out.
+
+"Any one here?"
+
+"Yes," came from the corner, and there was a rustling of straw.
+
+"I guess I know who," said Bart. "Come out of that, my good friend, and
+show yourself," he continued heartily.
+
+"What for?" propounded a gloomy, wavering voice.
+
+"What for? that's good!" cried Bart. "Oh, I know who you are, if I don't
+know your name."
+
+"Baker will do."
+
+"All right, Mr. Baker, friend Baker, you're true blue and the best
+friend I ever had, and I want to shake hands with you, and slap you on
+the back, and--help you."
+
+A timid, muffled figure shifted into full outline, but not into clear
+view, against the side of the car.
+
+Bart took a step nearer. He promptly caught at one hand of the
+slouching figure. Then he regarded it in perplexity.
+
+The roustabout held with his other hand a canvas bag on his head so that
+it concealed nearly his entire face.
+
+"Why!" said Bart, reaching suddenly up and momentarily pulling the
+impromptu hood aside. "What's the matter now? Where is your beard and
+long head of hair?"
+
+"Burned."
+
+"False?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you were disguised?"
+
+"I tried to be," was responded faintly.
+
+Bart stood for a moment or two queerly regarding the roustabout.
+
+"Mr. Baker," he said finally, "I am bound to respect any wish you may
+suggest, but I declare I can't understand you."
+
+"Don't try to," advised the roustabout in a dreary way. "I'm not worth
+it."
+
+"Oh, yes, you are."
+
+"And it wouldn't do any good."
+
+"It might. It must!" declared Bart staunchly, "See here, I want to ask
+you a few questions and then I want to give you some advice, or rather
+tender my very friendly services. Do you know what you have done for me
+to-day?"
+
+"No. If I have done anything to help you I am glad of it. You have been
+a friend to me--the only friend I've found."
+
+"I'll be a better one--that is, if you will let me," pledged Bart
+warmly. "You warned me about the burglars last night; you helped me save
+my father's life."
+
+"Anybody would do what I have done."
+
+"No one did but yourself, just the same. Don't be cynical--you're
+something of a hero, if you only knew it. It was you who went into the
+burning express shed and saved the account books and closed the safe
+door."
+
+"Who says so?" muttered Baker.
+
+"I say so, and you know it--don't you?"
+
+Baker made no response.
+
+"Do you know what all this means for me and my family?" went on Bart.
+"You have done for me something I can never pay you for, something I can
+never forget. You are true blue, Mr. Baker! That's the kind of a
+worthless good-for-nothing person you are, and I want to call you my
+friend! Hello, now what is the matter?"
+
+The matter was that the roustabout was crying softly like a baby. Bart
+was infinitely touched.
+
+"I don't know your secrets," continued Bart earnestly, "and I certainly
+shall not pry into them without your permission, but I want to repay
+your kindness in some way. I can't rest till I do. All I can do is to
+guess out that you are in some trouble, maybe hiding. Well, let me share
+your troubles, let me hide you in a more comfortable way than lounging
+around cold freight cars with half enough to eat. You've done something
+grand in the last twenty-four hours--don't lose sight of that in
+mourning over your sins, if you have any, or in running away from some
+shadow that scares you. I'm not the only one who thinks you're a hero,
+either. There's someone else."
+
+"Is there?" murmured the roustabout weakly.
+
+"There is. It is Mr. Leslie, the express superintendent. I told him
+about you. He left this ten dollars for you, and the way he did it ought
+to make you proud."
+
+Bart forced the bank note into Baker's hand. The man was shaking like a
+leaf from emotion. He stood like one spellbound, unable to take in all
+at once the good that was said of him and done him.
+
+"Come," rallied Bart, giving him a ringing slap on the shoulder, "brace
+up and be what you have proved yourself to be--a man!"
+
+Baker started electrically. His tones showed some force as he said:
+
+"All right--you've made me feel good. But you don't know a whole lot,
+and I can't tell you. You say you're my friend."
+
+"You believe that I am, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, I do, and that's why I don't want to drag you into any
+complications. This ten dollars is mine, isn't it?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Will you spend it for me?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I want you to give me a pencil and some paper, and I will write out a
+list of some things I want. You take it and the ten dollars and bring me
+the things here to-morrow. I want you to promise in the meantime,
+though, that if you come upon me unawares, or when I'm asleep, or under
+any circumstances whatever, you will turn your head away and not look at
+my face."
+
+Bart was very much puzzled.
+
+"I think I see how it is," he said after a brief period of reflection,
+"you are afraid of being recognized?"
+
+"Think that if you want to, maybe you're right," returned Baker.
+"Anyway, I don't want to do anything or have you do anything that will
+mix you up in my troubles. My way is the safe way. Will you do what I
+ask?"
+
+"Yes," answered Bart promptly. "Can't I get the things you want
+to-night?"
+
+"I am afraid not, for most of the stores are closed."
+
+"That's right. Well, then, let me make a suggestion: I have two keys to
+the new express office. I'll give you one. After dark, if you don't want
+to do it in daylight, go over and unlock the door. Pick out two or three
+dry-goods boxes from the heap behind the shed, carry them in and rig up
+any kind of private quarters you like at the far corner of the shed.
+I'll see that nobody disturbs you. In a couple of hours I will bring you
+a blanket from the house and a nice warm lunch, and you can be
+comfortable and safe. I will relock the door on you, and if you want to
+leave at any time you can unfasten a window and get out."
+
+Baker did not reply. Bart heard him mumbling to himself as though
+debating the proposition submitted to him.
+
+"I don't want to make you a lot of trouble," he finally faltered out.
+
+"Of course you don't, and won't," asserted Bart--"you want to give me
+pleasure, though, don't you? So you do as I suggest, and I'll sleep a
+good deal sounder than if you didn't. Here's the key. I will be over to
+the express office about eight o'clock. Is it a bargain?"
+
+"Yes," answered the strange man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"HIGHER STILL!"
+
+
+About eight o'clock that evening Bart came down to the express office
+carrying a lunch basket and a blanket, as he had promised his erratic
+friend, Mr. Baker.
+
+The young express agent had spent a busy day, and the evening promised
+to continue to furnish plenty for him to do.
+
+He had the infinite pleasure of seeing his mother's face brighten up
+magically, when he related sufficient to her of the day's experience to
+satisfy her that the revenue from the express business was secure.
+
+She had received some intimation of this from her husband's lips an hour
+previous at the hospital, and said that Mr. Stirling was feeling
+relieved and hopeful over the visit of the express superintendent, and
+the prospects of Bart succeeding to his position.
+
+Bart very much wished to visit his father at once, but Mrs. Stirling
+said he had quieted for the night, was in no pain or mental distress,
+and it might not be wise to disturb him.
+
+Bart told his mother something about the roustabout and their friendly
+relations, and the bottle of hot coffee, home-made biscuit sandwiches,
+and half a pie were put up for Bart's pensioner with willing and
+grateful care.
+
+Bart also took a shade lantern with him, and lighted it when he came to
+the express office. He found the padlock loose.
+
+He glanced over to the far dim end of the place. Baker had built a
+regular cross-corner barricade of packing boxes, man-high.
+
+Bart set the lantern on the bench and approached the roustabout's
+hide-out.
+
+"Are you there, Mr. Baker?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, I did just as you told me to do," came the reply, but the speaker
+did not show himself.
+
+"Well, here's a blanket. Can you make up a comfortable bed?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I've got a broad board on a slant, and plenty of room."
+
+Bart lifted over the lunch basket.
+
+"There you are!" he said briskly--"now enjoy yourself, and don't take a
+single care about anything. Have you made out that list of things you
+want?"
+
+"Yes, here it is," and Baker handed over a piece of paper inclosing the
+ten-dollar bill.
+
+"I'll attend to this promptly," said Bart. "Supposing I look it over
+right here? There may be some things you have noted down I want to ask
+you about."
+
+"Maybe you'd better," assented Baker.
+
+Bart sat down near the lantern. The bit of paper was covered with crude
+handwriting, the same as that which had announced to him that afternoon
+that the contents of the safe in the old express shed ruins were safe.
+
+The list was not a very long one, but it was not easy to fill.
+
+Baker gave the measurements of a very cheap cotton suit and the size of
+a cap with a very deep peak. He also notated a green eye-shade, a pair
+of goggles, and the ingredients for making a dark brown face stain.
+
+In addition to this he wanted a dark gray hair switch, and it was easy
+to discern that his main idea was to prepare an elaborate disguise.
+
+"All right," reported Bart, as he finished reading the list. "I'll have
+the things here just as early in the morning as I can get them. I'm
+going to put out the lantern, but I will then hand it over to you with
+some matches. It has got a shade, and you can focus the rays so they
+will not show outside. Here are a couple of magazines--I brought them
+from the house."
+
+"You're mighty kind," said the refugee. "Hold on. I want to tell you
+something. Of course you think I'm acting strange. Some day, though, if
+things come out right, I'll explain to you, and you will say I did just
+right. There's another thing: you may think from my actions I am some
+desperate character. I hope I may burn up right in this shed to-night if
+I'm not telling the truth when I say to you that I never touched a
+dishonored penny, never harmed a soul, never did a wrong thing
+knowingly."
+
+"I have confidence in your word, Mr. Baker," said Bart simply.
+
+"Thank you, I'll prove I deserve it yet," declared the strange man.
+
+There was a spell of silence. Finally Bart decided to venture a question
+on a theme he was very curious about.
+
+"Do you know Colonel Jeptha Harrington?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Hoo--eh?"
+
+He had startled Baker--his incoherent mutterings persuaded Bart of
+this.
+
+"Don't you want to tell?" continued Bart. "All right, only it was you
+who waved an arm at him from the freight car this afternoon, wasn't it,
+now?"
+
+"Well, yes, it was," admitted Baker in a low tone.
+
+"And you said something to him."
+
+"Yes, I did. See here, I heard him calling you down and threatening you,
+for I slunk up to the shed here to see what he was up to. I'm interested
+in him, I am, and so are others. When I got back in hiding I spoke out,
+I told him something--something that made his crabbed old soul wizen up,
+something that scared the daylights out of him. He had a brother, once.
+He's dead, now. I said something that made this old rascal think his
+brother's ghost had come back to earth to haunt him."
+
+"How could you do that?" inquired Bart, very much interested.
+
+"Because I had certain knowledge. Don't ask any further. It will all
+come out, some day--the day I'm waiting and working for. You saw how he
+was affected. Well, I threatened things that laid him out flat if he
+dared to so much as place a straw in your path."
+
+"I understand, now," said Bart.
+
+He waited for a minute or two, hoping Baker would divulge something
+further, but he did not do so, and Bart said good night, secured the
+padlock on the outside, and left the place with a parting cheery
+direction to his strange pensioner to sleep soundly and rest well.
+
+The little ones were in bed when Bart got home, but his mother and the
+girls were sitting on the porch. Pretty well tired out, Bart joined
+them, and they all sat watching the last of the display of fireworks
+over near the common.
+
+"This has been a pretty dull Fourth for you, Bart," said his mother
+sympathizingly.
+
+"It has been a very busy Fourth, mother," returned Bart cheerfully--"I
+might say a very hopeful, happy Fourth. Except for the anxiety about
+father, I think I should feel very grateful and contented."
+
+A graceful rocket parted the air at a distance, followed by the
+delighted shouts of juvenile spectators.
+
+"Upward and onward," murmured Mrs. Stirling, placing a tender, loving
+hand on Bart's shoulder.
+
+A second rocket went whizzing up. It raced the other, outdistanced it,
+seemed bound for the furthest heights, never swerving from a true,
+straight line.
+
+Then it broke grandly, sending a radiant glow across the clear, serene
+sky.
+
+"That's my motto," said Bart, a touch of intense resolve in his
+tones--"higher still!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MRS. HARRINGTON'S TRUNK
+
+
+"Hey, there! Stirling."
+
+Bart was busy at his desk in the express office, but turned quickly as
+he recognized the tones.
+
+Trouble in the shape of Lem Wacker loomed up at the doorway.
+
+"What is it?" asked Bart.
+
+It was a week after the Fourth, and in all that time Bart had not seen
+anything of the man whom he secretly believed was responsible for the
+fire at the old express office.
+
+"Who's the responsible party here?" demanded Lem, making a great ado
+over consulting a book he carried.
+
+"I am."
+
+"All right, then--I represent Martin & Company, pickle factory."
+
+"Oh, you've found a job, have you," spoke Bart, forced to smile at the
+bombastic business air assumed by his visitor.
+
+"I represent Martin & Company," came from Wacker, in a solemn,
+dignified way. "Inspector. We want a rebate on that bill of lading."
+
+Lem removed a slip from his loose-leaf book and tendered it to Bart.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" inquired Bart.
+
+"Consignment short," announced Wacker.
+
+Bart looked him squarely in the eyes. Wacker had made the announcement
+malignantly. His gaze dropped.
+
+"I'm hired to stop the leaks," he mumbled, "and if this office is
+responsible for any of them I'm the man to find it out."
+
+"Well, in the present instance your claim is sheer folly. I see you note
+here one hundred and fifty pounds shortage. What is your basis?"
+
+"I weighed them myself."
+
+Bart consulted his books. Then he turned again to Wacker.
+
+"This consignment was shipped as nine hundred and fifty pounds," he
+said. "It weighed that at the start."
+
+"That's what the shipping agent says, yes."
+
+"And you claim eight hundred pounds?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"It was weighed up here when received--nine hundred and fifty pounds."
+
+"Come off!" jeered Wacker. "Wasn't I an express agent once and don't I
+know the ropes? What receiving agent ever takes the trouble to
+re-weigh!"
+
+"My father did--I always do," announced Bart flatly.
+
+"Even if you did," persisted Wacker, "what little one-horse agent dares
+to dispute the big company's weight at the other end of the line?"
+
+"Oh," observed Bart smoothly, "you think there is a sort of collusion,
+do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do--I am an expert!"
+
+"Sorry to disturb the profundity of your calculations, Mr. Wacker," said
+Bart quietly, "but in the present instance there could not possibly be
+any mistake. Our scales were burned up in the fire. The new ones have
+not yet arrived, and in the meantime, as a temporary accommodation, our
+weighing is done up at the in-freight platform by the official weigh
+master of the road. I fancy Martin & Company will accept that
+verification as final. Don't you think so, Mr. Wacker?"
+
+Lem Wacker snatched the paper Bart returned to him with a positive
+growl.
+
+"I'll catch you Smart-Alecks yet!" he muttered surlily.
+
+"What are you so anxious to catch us for?" inquired Bart coolly.
+
+"Never you mind--I'll get you!"
+
+Lem Wacker had said that before, and as he backed away Bart dismissed
+him with a shrug of his shoulders.
+
+There were too many practical things occupying his time to waste any on
+fancies. Bart had put in a very busy week, and a very satisfactory one.
+He had started in with a system, and had never allowed it to lag. In
+fact, he improved it daily.
+
+Thanks to his brief, but thorough apprenticeship under his father's
+direction, he had acquired a knowledge of all the ins and outs of the
+office work proper.
+
+He had shown great diligence in clearing up the old business. In three
+days after taking official charge Bart had forwarded to headquarters all
+the claims covering the fire.
+
+He had also listed the unclaimed packages in the safe, together with
+those burned up, had followed out Mr. Leslie's direction to collect all
+not-called-for express matter at little stations in his division, and
+was now awaiting an order from headquarters as to their final
+disposition.
+
+The strange "Mr. Baker" had drifted out of his life, temporarily at
+least.
+
+Bart had purchased the articles the roustabout had required, and that
+evening Baker came out from his hiding-place marvelously unlike the
+great-bearded, shock-headed individual Bart had previously known.
+
+A green patch and goggles, a deep brown face-stain, and a pair of thin
+artistically made "side-burns" comprised a puzzling make-up.
+
+Baker told Bart that he felt himself perfectly disguised, that he could
+now venture freely down the road a distance where he had business.
+
+"I'll be back, though," he promised. "Perhaps in two weeks. I'm not
+through with Pleasantville. Oh, no! There's going to be an explosion
+here some time soon. You've put me on my feet, Stirling, and you won't
+be sorry when you know what I'm after."
+
+Bart had half planned to hire Baker for what extra work he had to give
+out. He had to look about for someone else, and Darry Haven and his
+brother, Bob, alternately came around to the express office before and
+after school, and helped Bart.
+
+The company allowed for this extra service, but Bart had to take a
+separate voucher for each task done.
+
+Colonel Harrington had left for a fashionable resort two days after the
+Fourth, and Bart understood that Mrs. Harrington was preparing to join
+him there.
+
+Bart's father had been taken home after spending two days in the
+hospital.
+
+The surgeon there had told him that his case was not at all hopeless,
+and the old express agent was cheerful and patient under his affliction,
+and nights Bart made a great showing of the necessity of going over the
+business of the day, so as to keep his father's mind occupied.
+
+So far Bart's affairs had settled down to what seemed to be a clear and
+definite basis, and when that afternoon a new platform scale arrived,
+and he received a letter of instructions from Mr. Leslie concerning the
+sale of the unclaimed express packages, he felt a certain spice of
+pleasant anticipation injected into the business routine.
+
+"Why, it will be a regular circus!" said Darry Haven that afternoon,
+when Bart told him about it. "Last year they advertised the sale at
+Marion. I was up there at my uncle's. All the farmers came in for miles
+around, and the way they bid, and the funny things they found in the
+packages, made it jolly, I tell you!"
+
+When Bart got through with the routine work the next day, he started in
+to formulate his plans for the sale.
+
+It was to take place in thirty days, and the superintendent had relied
+on Bart's judgment to make it a success.
+
+Darry Haven came in as Bart was laboring over an advertisement for the
+four weekly papers of Pleasantville and vicinity.
+
+"Here," he said promptly, "you are of a literary family. Suppose you
+take charge of this, and get up the matter for a dodger, too."
+
+"Say, Bart," said Darry eagerly, "we can print the dodgers--my brother
+and I--as good as a regular office. You know we've got a good amateur
+outfit at home. Father was an editor, and I'll get him to write up a
+first-class stunner of an advertisement. Can't you throw the job our
+way?"
+
+"If you make the price right, of course," answered Bart.
+
+"We can afford to underbid them all," declared Darry; and so the matter
+was settled.
+
+"Oh, by the way," said Darry, as he was about to leave--"Lem Wacker's
+out of a job again."
+
+"You don't surprise me," remarked Bart, "but how is that?"
+
+"Why, Martin & Company are buying green peppers at seventy cents a
+bushel. They heard that down at Arlington someone was offering them to
+the storekeepers at one dollar for two bushels, investigated, detected
+Dale Wacker peddling the peppers from factory bags, and found that his
+uncle, Lem, was mixed up in the affair. Anyway, Dale's father had to
+settle the bill, and they fired Lem."
+
+"Mr. Lem Wacker is bad enough when at work," remarked Bart, "but out of
+work I fear he is a dangerous man. All right!" he called, hurrying to
+the door as there was a hail from outside.
+
+Colonel Harrington's buckboard was backed to the platform and its driver
+was unloading a large trunk.
+
+Bart helped carry it in, dumped it on the scales, went to the desk, got
+the receipt book, and reading the label on the trunk found that it was
+directed to Mrs. Harrington at Cedar Springs, the summer resort to which
+the colonel had already gone.
+
+"Value?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington didn't say, and I don't know. If you saw all the finery
+in that trunk, though, you'd stare. You see, Mrs. Harrington is going to
+stay three weeks at the Springs, and is sending on her finest and best.
+I'll bet they amount to a couple of thousand dollars."
+
+Bart filled out a blank receipt, stamping it: "Value asked, and not
+given."
+
+"It can't go till morning," he said.
+
+"That don't matter. The missus won't be going down to the Springs till
+Saturday."
+
+"You have just missed the afternoon express," went on Bart.
+
+"Yes, Lem Wacker said I would."
+
+"What has he got to do with it?" asked Bart.
+
+"Why, nothing, I gave him a lift down the road, and he told me that."
+
+The driver departed. Bart stood so long looking ruminatively at the
+trunk that Darry Haven finally nudged his arm.
+
+"Hi! come out of it," he called. "What's bothering you, Bart?"
+
+"Nothing--I was just thinking."
+
+"About that trunk, evidently, from the way you stare at it."
+
+"Exactly," confessed Bart. "I believe I am getting superstitious about
+anything connected with the Harringtons or the Wackers. Here, give me a
+lift."
+
+"All right. Where?"
+
+"Swing it up--I want to get it on top of the safe."
+
+"What!" ejaculated Darry in profound amazement.
+
+"Yes, we don't handle property in the thousands every day in the week."
+
+"But the company is responsible only up to fifty dollars, when they
+don't pay excess."
+
+"That doesn't satisfy the shipper if there is any loss. I feel we ought
+to be extra careful until we get a new office with proper safeguards,
+and that expensive outfit staying here all night worries me. Up--hoist!"
+
+Bart settled the trunk on top of the safe, and on top of that he set the
+lantern.
+
+When he locked up for the night he lit the lantern, and went over to the
+freight platform where the night watchman had just come on duty.
+
+Bart knew him well and liked him, and the feeling was reciprocal.
+
+He explained that a valuable trunk had to remain overnight in the
+express shed, and how he had placed it.
+
+"Just take a casual glance over there on your rounds, will you, Mr.
+McCarthy?" he continued.
+
+"I certainly will. You set the lantern so it shows things inside, and
+I'll keep an eye open," acquiesced the watchman.
+
+Bart went home feeling satisfied and relieved at the arrangement he had
+made.
+
+All the same he did not sleep well that night. About daybreak he woke
+up with a sudden jump, for he had dreamed that Colonel Harrington had
+thrown him into a deep pit, and that Lem Wacker was dropping Mrs.
+Harrington's precious trunk on top of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AN EARLY "CALL"
+
+
+The young express agent was conscious that he shouted outright in his
+nightmare, for the trunk he was dreaming about as it struck him seemed
+to explode into a thousand pieces.
+
+The echoes of the explosion appeared to still ring in his ears, as he
+sat up and pulled himself together. Then he discovered that it was a
+real sound that had awakened him.
+
+"Only five," he murmured, with a quick glance at the alarm clock on the
+bureau--"and someone at the front door!"
+
+Rat, tat, tat! it was a sharp, distinct summons.
+
+"Why," continued Bart briskly, jumping out of bed and hurrying on some
+clothes, "it's Jeff!"
+
+Jeff was "the caller" for the roundhouse. He was a feature in the B. &
+M. system, and for ten years had pursued his present occupation.
+
+"Something's up," ruminated Bart a little excitedly, as he ran down the
+stairs and opened the front door. "What is it, Jeff?"
+
+"Wanted," announced the laconic caller.
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"McCarthy, down at the freight house."
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"He didn't tell---just asked me to get you there quick as your feet
+could carry you."
+
+"Thank you, Jeff, I'll lose no time."
+
+Bart hurried into his clothes. Clear of the house, he ran all the way to
+the railroad yards.
+
+As he rounded into them from Depot Street, he came in sight of the
+express office.
+
+McCarthy, the night watchman, was seated on the platform looking down in
+a rueful way.
+
+He got up as Bart approached, and the latter noticed that he looked
+haggard, and swayed as though his head was dizzy.
+
+"What is it?" cried out Bart irrepressibly.
+
+"I'm sorry, Stirling," said the watchman, "but--look there!"
+
+Bart could not restrain a sharp cry of concern. The express office door
+stood open, and the padlock and staples, torn from place, lay on the
+platform. He rushed into the building. Then his dismay was complete.
+
+"The trunk!" he cried--"it's gone!"
+
+"Yes, it is!" groaned McCarthy, pressing at his heels.
+
+Bart cast a reproachful look at the watchman. The lantern, too, had
+disappeared. He sank to the bench, overcome. Finally he inquired
+faintly:
+
+"How did it happen?"
+
+"I only know what happened to me," responded the watchman. "I was
+drugged."
+
+"When--where--by whom?"
+
+"It's guesswork, that, but the fact stands--I was dosed. You asked me to
+watch, and I did watch. Up to midnight that lantern on top of the trunk
+wasn't out of my sight fifteen minutes at a time."
+
+"And then?" questioned Bart.
+
+"I always go over to the crossing switch shanty about twelve o'clock to
+eat my lunch. The old switchman lends me his night key. I put my lunch
+in on the bench when I come on duty, and he always leaves the stove full
+of splinters to warm up the coffee quick. When I let myself in at
+midnight, the lantern here was right as a beacon--I particularly noticed
+it."
+
+"How long was it before you came out again?"
+
+"Four hours afterwards--just a little while ago."
+
+"Then you--fell asleep?" said Bart.
+
+"Yes, I did, and no blame to me. I'm no skulker, as you well know. I
+never did such a thing before in all my ten years of duty here. I was
+doped."
+
+"How do you know that?" asked Bart.
+
+"I warmed up the coffee and had my lunch," narrated the watchman. "Then
+I settled down for a ten minutes' comfortable smoke, as I always do. I
+felt sort of sickish, right away. I had noticed that the coffee tasted
+queer, but I fancied it might have been burned. Anyhow, half an hour ago
+I seemed to come out of a stupor, my head fairly splitting, and my
+stomach burning as though I'd taken poison. I thought of poison,
+somehow, and more so than ever as I reached over to see if there was any
+coffee left, for my throat was dry as a piece of pine board. There
+wasn't, but at the bottom of the pail were two or three little sticky
+brown dabs. I tasted the stuff. It was opium. I know, for I've used it
+in sickness. I stumbled out to get the air. The minute I glanced over at
+the express office I guessed it all out. It's a burglary, right and
+proper, Stirling, and the fellows who did it knew I was on the watch,
+got into the switch shanty, fixed the coffee and put me to sleep."
+
+Bart rapidly turned over in his mind all that the watchman had
+disclosed.
+
+"See here," he said promptly, "how many keys are there to the switch
+shanty?"
+
+"Only one that I know anything of," responded McCarthy. "There can't be
+many, or the old switchman wouldn't have to lend me his key."
+
+"Lem Wacker subbed for him once, didn't he?" inquired Bart pointedly.
+
+"Yes, for a day or two--say! you don't think--" began the watchman, with
+a start of suspicion.
+
+"I'm not thinking anything positive," interrupted Bart--"I am only
+seeking information. When Wacker subbed for the old switchman, did he
+have a special key?"
+
+"N--no," answered the watchman hesitatingly, "for I remember Wacker
+loaned me the old switchman's key the first night. Hold on, though!"
+cried McCarthy with a spurt of memory, "it comes back to me clear now.
+The next night he told me to keep the key till the old switchman came
+back on duty--so he must have had an extra one of his own. They are
+easily got--it's a common, ordinary lock."
+
+Bart's lips shut close. He went outside, looked keenly around, and
+jumped down from the platform.
+
+The watchman trailed out after him, watching him in a worried,
+discouraged way. There was no doubting the word of a trusted employee
+like McCarthy, and Bart realized that he felt very badly over the
+matter.
+
+"What is it, Stirling--have you found anything?" asked the watchman
+eagerly, as Bart, after inspecting the roadway, still more narrowly
+regarded the edges of the platform boards, running his finger over them
+in a critical way.
+
+"Yes, I have," announced Bart--"that trunk was taken away from here in a
+wagon."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Look at those fresh wheel tracks," directed Bart, pointing to the road.
+"They sided a wagon up to the platform, right here. So close, that a
+wheel or the body of the wagon scraped along the edges of the boards.
+The paint was fresh. And it was bright red," added Bart.
+
+"You're a good one to guess that out," muttered the watchman. "Why,
+say--"
+
+McCarthy gave a prodigious start and put his hand up to his head, as if
+some idea had occurred to him with tremendous force. "You mentioned Lem
+Wacker. It's funny, but last week Wacker bought a new wagon."
+
+"Are you sure of that?"
+
+"Yes, it was the same one that his scapegrace nephew, Dale Wacker, was
+caught peddling the stolen pickles in. I saw Lem painting it fresh out
+in his shop only two days ago. You know I live just beyond him."
+
+"What color?"
+
+"Red."
+
+"Then Lem Wacker must know something about this burglary!" declared
+Bart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+AT FAULT
+
+
+"I am sorry," again said the night watchman, after a long thoughtful
+silence on the part of Bart.
+
+"I know you are, Mr. McCarthy," returned Bart, "but nobody blames you.
+I've got to get back that trunk, though! you are positive about Lem
+Wacker's wagon being newly painted?"
+
+"Oh, sure."
+
+"And red?"
+
+"Yes, a bright red. Wacker lives near us, as I said. I strolled down the
+alley day before yesterday. I saw his shed doors open, and Wacker
+putting on the paint. I remember even joking him about his experience in
+painting the town the same color once in awhile. He took that as a
+compliment, Lem did. It seems he traded for the wagon some time ago. He
+told me he was going to start an express company of his own."
+
+"He seems to have done it--so far as that trunk is concerned!" murmured
+Bart. "Mr. McCarthy, you and I are friends?"
+
+"Good friends, Stirling."
+
+"And I can talk pretty freely to you?"
+
+"I see your drift--you think Lem Wacker had a hand in this burglary?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"Well, I'll say that I don't think he's beyond it," observed the
+watchman. "You'll find, though, he only had a hand in it. His way is
+generally using someone else for a cat's-paw."
+
+"I am going to ask you to do something for me," resumed Bart
+seriously--"I'm going to get back that trunk--I've got to get it back."
+
+"The company ought to provide you with a safe, decent building."
+
+"That will come in time."
+
+"No one can blame you. They can't expect you to sit up watching all
+night, nor carrying trunks to bed with you for safe-keeping."
+
+"No, but the head office, while it might stand an accidental fire, will
+not stand a big loss on top of it. My ability to handle this express
+proposition successfully is at stake and, besides that, I would rather
+have almost anybody about my ears than Mrs. Harrington."
+
+"The colonel's wife is a Tartar, all right," bluntly declared the night
+watchman. "Hello! here's somebody from Harrington's, now."
+
+The same buckboard that had driven up the afternoon previous, came
+dashing to the platform as McCarthy spoke.
+
+It was in charge of the same driver, who promptly hailed Bart with the
+words:
+
+"That trunk gone yet?"
+
+"No, not yet," answered Bart.
+
+"Then I'm in time. Mrs. Harrington wanted to put something else in--this
+box. Forgot it, yesterday," and the speaker fished up an oblong package
+from the bottom of the wagon.
+
+"It will have to go separate," explained Bart.
+
+"Can't do that--it's a silk dress, and not wrapped for any hard usage.
+Why, what's happened!" pressed the colonel's man, shrewdly scanning the
+disturbed countenances of Bart and the watchman. "Door lock smashed,
+too, and--say! I don't see the trunk!"
+
+He had stepped to the platform and looked inside the express shed.
+
+Bart thought it best to explain, and did so. It made him feel more
+crestfallen than ever to trace in the way his auditor took it, that he
+anticipated some pretty lively action when Mrs. Harrington was apprised
+of her loss.
+
+"You can tell Mrs. Harrington that everything possible is being done to
+recover the trunk," Bart told the man as he drove off. "Now then, Mr.
+McCarthy," he continued, turning to his companion, "I am going to ask
+you to take charge here till I return. I will pay you a full day's
+wages, even if you have to stay only an hour."
+
+"You'll pay me nothing!" declared the watchman vigorously. "I'll camp
+right in your service as soon as the seven o'clock whistle blows, and
+you get on the trail of that missing trunk."
+
+"I intend to," said Bart. "I will get Darry Haven to come down here. He
+knows the office routine. In the meantime, we had better not say much
+about the burglary."
+
+"Are you going on a hunt for Lem Wacker?"
+
+"I am."
+
+Bart went first to the Haven home. He found Darry Haven chopping wood,
+told him of the burglary, and asked him to get down to the express
+office as soon as he could.
+
+"If you don't come back by nine o'clock, I will arrange to stay all
+day," promised Darry.
+
+Then Bart went to the house where Lem Wacker lived. It was
+characteristic of its proprietor--ricketty, disorderly, the yard unkept
+and grown over with weeds.
+
+Smoke was coming out of the chimney. Someone was evidently astir
+within, but the shades were down, and Bart stole around to the rear.
+
+The shed doors were open, and the wagon gone and the horse's stall
+vacant.
+
+Bart went to the back door of the house and knocked, and in a few
+minutes it was opened by a thin-faced, slatternly-looking woman.
+
+Bart knew who she was, and she apparently knew him, though they had
+never spoken together before. The woman's face looked interested, and
+then worried.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Wacker," said Bart, courteously lifting his cap.
+"Could I see Mr. Wacker for a moment?"
+
+"He isn't at home."
+
+"Oh! went away early? I suppose, though, he will be back soon."
+
+"No, he hasn't been home all night," responded the woman in a dreary,
+listless tone. "You work at the railroad, don't you? Have they sent for
+Lem? He said he was expecting a job there--we need it bad enough!"
+
+She glanced dejectedly about the wretched kitchen as she spoke, and Bart
+felt truly sorry for her.
+
+"I have no word of any work," announced Bart, "but I wish to see Mr.
+Wacker very much on private business." When did he leave home?
+
+"Last night at ten o'clock."
+
+"With his horse and wagon?"
+
+"Why, yes," admitted the woman, with a sudden, wondering glance at Bart.
+"How did you know that?"
+
+"I noticed the wagon wasn't in the shed."
+
+"Oh, he sold it--and the horse."
+
+"When, Mrs. Wacker?"
+
+"Last night some men came here, two of them, about nine o'clock. They
+talked a long time in the sitting room, and then Lem went out and
+hitched up. He came into the kitchen before he went away, and told me he
+had a chance to sell the rig, and was going to do it, and had to go down
+to the Sharp Corner to treat the men and close the bargain."
+
+"I see," murmured Bart. "Who were the men, Mrs. Wacker?"
+
+"I don't know. One of them was here with Lem about two weeks ago, but I
+don't know his name, or where he lives. He don't belong in
+Pleasantville. Oh, dear!" she concluded, with a sigh of deep depression,
+"I wish Lem would get back on the road in a steady job, instead of
+scheming at this thing and that. He'll land us all in the poorhouse
+yet, for he spends all he gets down at the Corner."
+
+Bart backed down the steps, feeling secretly that Lem Wacker would have
+a hard time disproving a connection with the burglary.
+
+"Take care of the dog!" warned Mrs. Wacker as she closed the door.
+
+Bart, passing a battered dog-house, found it tenantless, however.
+
+"I wonder if Lem Wacker has sold the dog, too?" he reflected. "Poor Mrs.
+Wacker! I feel awfully sorry for her."
+
+Bart walked rapidly back the way he had come. It was just a quarter of
+seven when he reached a half-street extending along and facing the
+railroad tracks for a single square.
+
+The Sharp Corner was a second-class groggery and boarding house,
+patronized almost entirely by the poorest and most shiftless class of
+trackmen.
+
+Its proprietor was one Silas Green, once a switchman, later a prize
+fighter, always a hard drinker, and latterly so crippled with rheumatism
+and liquor that he was just able to get about.
+
+Bart went into the place to find its proprietor just opening up for the
+day. The dead, tainted air of the den made the young express agent
+almost faint. As it vividly contrasted with the sweet, garden scented
+atmosphere of home, he wondered how men could make it their haunt, and
+was sorry that even business had made it necessary for him to enter the
+place.
+
+"Mr. Green," he said, approaching the bar, "I am looking for Lem Wacker.
+Can you tell me where I may find him?"
+
+"Eh? oh, young Stirling, isn't it? Wacker? Why, yes, I know where he
+is."
+
+He came out slowly from the obscurity of the bar, blinking his faded
+eyes.
+
+Bart knew he would not be unfriendly. His father, one stormy night a few
+years previous, had picked up Green half frozen to death in a snowdrift,
+where he had fallen in a drunken stupor.
+
+Every Christmas day since then, Green had regularly sent a jug of liquor
+to his father, with word by the messenger that it was for "the squarest
+man in Pleasantville, who had saved his life."
+
+Mr. Stirling had set Bart a practical temperance example by pouring the
+liquor into the sink, but had not offended Green by declining his
+well-meant offerings.
+
+Bart remembered this, and felt that he might appeal to Green to some
+purpose.
+
+"Mr. Wacker is not at home," he explained, "and I wish to find him. I
+understand he was here last night."
+
+"He was," assented Green. "Came here about ten, and hasn't left the
+house since."
+
+"Why!" ejaculated Bart--and paused abruptly. "He is here now?"
+
+"Asleep upstairs."
+
+"And he has been here since--he is here now!" questioned Bart
+incredulously.
+
+"He was, ten minutes ago, when I came down--" asserted Green.
+
+Bart stood dumbfounded. He was at fault--the thought flashed over his
+mind in an instant.
+
+It would not be so easy as he had fancied to run down the burglars, for
+if what Silas Green said was true, Lem Wacker could prove a most
+conclusive _alibi_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A FAINT CLEW
+
+
+"What's the trouble, Stirling?" inquired Silas Green, as Bart stood
+silently thinking out the problem set before him. "You seem sort of
+disappointed to find Wacker here. If you didn't think he was here, why
+did you come inquiring for him?"
+
+"I knew he came here last night," said Bart. "Mrs. Wacker told me so."
+
+"Do you want to see him?"
+
+"No, I think not," answered Bart after a moment's reflection.
+
+"Then is there anything else I can do for you, or tell you? You seem
+troubled. They say I'm a crabbed, treacherous old fellow. All the same,
+I would do a good turn for Robert Stirling's son!"
+
+"Thank you," said Bart, feeling easier. "If you will, you might tell me
+who was with Lem Wacker last night."
+
+"Two men--don't know them from Adam, never saw them before. Lem drove
+up with them in his rig about ten o'clock. They took the horse and wagon
+around to the side shed and came in, drank and talked a lot among
+themselves, and finally started playing cards in the little room
+yonder."
+
+"By themselves?"
+
+"Yes. Once, when I went in with refreshments, Wacker was in a terrible
+temper. It seemed he had lost all his money, and he had staked his rig
+and lost that, too. One of the two men laughed at him, and rallied him,
+remarking he would have 'his share,' whatever that meant, in a day or
+two, and then they would meet again and give him his revenge. By the
+way, I'm off in my story--Wacker did leave here, about eleven o'clock."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes. He was gone half an hour, came back looking wise and excited,
+joined his cronies again, and at midnight was helpless. My man and I
+carried him upstairs to bed."
+
+"What became of the two men?"
+
+"They sat watching the clock till closing time, one o'clock, went out,
+unhitched the horse, and drove off."
+
+"I wish I knew who they were," murmured Bart.
+
+"I suppose I might worry it out of Wacker, when he gets his head clear,"
+suggested Green.
+
+"I don't believe he would tell you the truth--and he might suspect."
+
+"Suspect what?" demanded Green keenly.
+
+"Never mind, Mr. Green. Can I take a look into the room where they spent
+the evening?"
+
+"Certainly--go right in."
+
+Bart held his breath, nearly suffocated by the mixed liquor and tobacco
+taint in the close, disorderly looking apartment.
+
+His eye passed over the stained table, the broken glasses and litter of
+cigar stubs. Then he came nearer to the table. One corner was covered
+with chalk marks.
+
+They apparently represented the score of the games the trio had played.
+There were three columns.
+
+At the head of one was scrawled the name "Wacker," at the second "Buck,"
+at the third "Hank."
+
+Bart wondered if he had better try to interview Lem Wacker. He decided
+in the negative.
+
+In the first place, Wacker would not be likely to talk with him--if he
+did, he would be on his guard and prevaricate; and, lastly, as long as
+he was asleep he was out of mischief, and helpless to interfere with
+Bart.
+
+The young express agent left the Sharp Corner without saying anything
+further to Silas Green.
+
+He had his theory, and his plan. His theory was that Lem Wacker, with a
+perfect knowledge of the express office situation, had "fixed" the night
+watchman's lunch, and employed two accomplices to do the rest of the
+work.
+
+When Wacker woke up, he would simply say he had sold his rig to two
+strangers, and, so far as the actual burglary was concerned, would be
+able to prove a conclusive _alibi_.
+
+The men who had committed the deed had driven off with the wagon and
+trunk, and by this time were undoubtedly at a safe distance in hiding.
+
+Bart went home, got his breakfast, told his mother a trunk had got lost
+and he might have to go down the road to look it up, returned to the
+express office, found Darry Haven and McCarthy on duty, gave them some
+routine directions, and left the place.
+
+Darry Haven followed him outside with a rather serious face.
+
+"Bart," he said anxiously, "Mrs. Colonel Harrington drove down here a
+few minutes ago."
+
+"About the trunk, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, and she was wild over it. Said you had got rid of the trunk to
+spite her, because she had had some trouble with your mother."
+
+"Nonsense! Anything else?"
+
+"If the trunk don't show up to-day, she says she will have you
+arrested."
+
+Bart shrugged his shoulders, but he was consciously uneasy.
+
+"What did you tell her, Darry?" he inquired.
+
+"I put on all the official dignity I could assume, but was very polite
+all the time, informed her that mislaid, delayed and irregular express
+matter were common occurrences, that the company was responsible for its
+contracts, counted you one of its most reliable agents, and assured her
+that very possibly within twenty-four hours she would find her trunk
+delivered safe and sound at its destination."
+
+"Good for you!" laughed Bart. "Keep an eye on things. I'll show up, or
+wire, by night."
+
+"Any clew, Bart?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+Bart went straight to the home of Professor Abner Cunningham.
+
+That venerable gentleman--antiquarian, scientist and profound
+scholar--had a queer little place at the edge of the town where he
+raised wonderful bees, and grew freak squashes inside glass molds in
+every grotesque shape imaginable.
+
+He was a friend to all the boys in town, and Bart joined him without
+ceremony as he found him out on the lawn in his skull cap and dressing
+gown, studying a hornets' nest with a magnifying glass.
+
+"Ah, young Bartley--or Bartholomew, is it?" smiled the innocent-faced
+old scientist jovially. "I have a new volume on nomenclature that gives
+quite an interesting chapter on the Bartholomew subject. It takes you
+back to the eleventh century, in France--"
+
+"Professor, excuse me," interrupted Bart gracefully, "but something very
+vital to the twentieth century is calling for urgent attention, and I
+wanted to ask you a question or two."
+
+"Surely. Glad to tell you anything," assured the professor, happiest
+always when he was talking, and willing to talk for hours with anyone
+who would listen to him. "Come into the library."
+
+"I really haven't the time, Professor," said Bart. "Please let me ask if
+you had charge of getting up that directory of the county that a city
+firm published?"
+
+"Two years ago? yes," nodded the professor assentingly. "It was quite a
+pleasant and profitable task. I believe I saw about every resident in
+the county in preparing that directory."
+
+"I am going to ask you a foolish question, perhaps, Professor,"
+continued Bart, "for an accurate person like you of course took down
+only correct names, and not nicknames. Here is the gist of it, then. I
+am looking for two men, and I know only that they live outside of
+Pleasantville, and call themselves Buck and Hank."
+
+"Well! well! well!" muttered Professor Cunningham in a musing tone.
+"Hank, proper name Henry; Buck, proper name Buckingham--hold on, I've
+got it! Come in!" insisted the professor animatedly. "Oh, you haven't
+time? Buckingham? Sure thing! Wait here, just a minute."
+
+The professor rushed into the house, and in about two minutes came
+rushing out again.
+
+He had an open book in his hand, and stumbled over flower beds and walks
+recklessly as he consulted it on the run, spilling out some loose papers
+it contained, and leaving a white trail behind him.
+
+"You see here the value of keeping notes of everything," he panted, on
+reaching Bart--"nothing is lost in this world, however small. Here we
+are: 'County at large.' Now then, in my private notes: 'Allessandro'
+uncommon name--'look up--probably Greek.' 'Alaric, Altemus, Artemas,
+Benno, Borl, Bud--derived from Budlongor, Budmeister--Buck'--I've got
+it: 'Buckingham, last name Tolliver, residence: Millville, occupation
+none.' Hold on. We've got the clew--now for the town record."
+
+The Professor again flitted away to the house, and darted back again
+with a new volume in his hand.
+
+"Here you are!" he cried, selecting a printed page. "'Millville,
+population two hundred and sixty, not on railroad. R.S.T. Tappan,
+Tevens, Tolliver'--Ah, 'Buckingham Tolliver, Henry Tolliver,' must be
+brothers, I fancy. That's all I've got on record. Information any use to
+you?"
+
+"Is it?" cried Bart, in profound admiration of the old bookworm's
+system. "Professor, you are the wisest man and one of the best men I
+ever met!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A DUMB FRIEND
+
+
+At three o'clock that afternoon Bart Stirling sat down to rest at the
+side of a dusty country road, pretty well tired out, and about ready to
+return to Pleasantville.
+
+When old Professor Cunningham gave him the names Buck and Hank Tolliver,
+Bart was positive that the same covered the identity of the two men who
+had been at the Sharp Corner with Lem Wacker.
+
+Bart had started at once for Millville. His first intention was to get a
+conveyance at the livery stable, his first impulse to solicit the
+co-operation of the town police.
+
+While discussing these points mentally, however, a farmer driving west
+came down the road. He had a good team, said he was passing through
+Millville, seemed glad to give Bart a lift, and so it was that the young
+express agent found himself on the solitary lookout there, two hours
+before noon.
+
+He experienced no difficulty whatever in finding out all about the
+Tollivers inside of twenty minutes after his arrival.
+
+They were the last members of a shiftless, indolent family who had lived
+on the edge of Millville for twenty years.
+
+When the father and mother died the family broke up. The two boys, Buck
+and Hank, kept bachelor's hall at the ricketty old ruin of a house on
+the river until ejected by its owner for non-payment of rent, and then
+went to the bad generally.
+
+They patched up an abandoned shack over on the bottoms, the postmaster
+at Millville told Bart, and lived by fishing, hunting and their
+depredations on orchards and chicken coops.
+
+In one of their nightly forays about a year previous they were captured
+and fined heavily. They could not pay the fine and were sent to jail for
+six months.
+
+About the first of June they were released, came back to Millville,
+found their old shack burned down, and since then, the postmaster
+understood, had camped out in the woods, giving the town a wide
+berth--in fact, only occasionally appearing, to buy a little flour,
+sugar or coffee, or, mostly, tobacco.
+
+Nobody had seen them for over a week--nobody knew anything of a
+newly-painted red wagon.
+
+It seemed probable, Bart theorized, that if they had made for hiding in
+any of their familiar woodland haunts, they had reached the same by
+driving through Millville before daylight, and when nobody was astir.
+
+Bart finally found a woodcutter who knew where the Tollivers had had
+their camping place the week previous. He described the spot and Bart
+was soon there--a secluded gully about two miles from town.
+
+The place showed evidences of having been used as a camp, but not
+recently, and Bart went on a general blind hunt.
+
+He traversed the woods for miles, both sides of a dried up rivercourse,
+and inquired at farmhouses and of occasional pedestrians he met.
+
+It was all of no avail. At three o'clock in the afternoon, tired,
+bramble-torn and a little discouraged, he sat down by the roadside to
+rest and think. He began to censure himself for taking the independent
+course he had pursued.
+
+"I should have telegraphed the company the circumstances of the
+burglary, and put the matter in the hands of the Pleasantville police,"
+he reflected. "If the trunk had belonged to anybody except Mrs. Colonel
+Harrington, I would have done so at once. Somebody coming!" he
+interrupted his soliloquy, as he caught a vague movement through the
+shrubbery where the road curved.
+
+"No--it's only a dog."
+
+The animal came into view going a straight, fast course, its head
+drooping, a broken rope trailing from its neck.
+
+Bart suddenly sprang to his feet, for, studying the animal more closely,
+something familiar presented itself and he ran out into the middle of
+the road.
+
+"Come here--good fellow!" he hailed coaxingly, as the animal approached.
+
+But with a slight growl, and eyeing him suspiciously, it made a detour
+in the road, passing him.
+
+"Lem Wacker's dog--I am sure of that!" explained Bart, naturally
+excited. "Come, old fellow--here! here! what is his name? I've got
+it--Christmas. Come here, Christmas!"
+
+The dog halted suddenly, faced about, and stared at Bart.
+
+Then, when he repeated the name, it sank to its haunches panting, and,
+head on one side, regarded him inquiringly.
+
+The animal was a big half-breed mastiff and shepherd dog that Lem Wacker
+had introduced to his railroad friends with great unction, one Christmas
+day.
+
+He had claimed it to be a gift from a friend just returned from Europe,
+who had brought over the famous litter of pups of which it was one.
+
+Wacker had estimated its value at five hundred dollars. Next day he cut
+the price in half. New Year's day, being hard up, he confidentially
+offered to sell it for five dollars.
+
+After that it went begging for fifty cents and trade, and no takers. Lem
+kicked the poor animal around as "an ornery, no-good brute," and had to
+keep it tied up on his own premises all of the time to evade paying for
+a license tag.
+
+Meeting the dog now, gave a new animation to Bart's thoughts.
+
+The sequence of its appearance, here, ten miles away from home, was easy
+to pursue. It had broken away from its new owners--Buck and Hank
+Tolliver--and they were somewhere further up the road.
+
+Christmas was making for home. It was hardly possible that the animal
+knew Bart, for, although he had seen it several times, he had never
+spoken to it before. The call of its name, however, had checked the
+animal, and now as Bart drew a cracker from his pocket and extended it,
+the dog began to advance slowly and cautiously towards him.
+
+Bart saw the importance of making a friend of the animal. He stood
+perfectly still, talking in a gentle, persuasive tone.
+
+Christmas came up to him timorously, sniffed all about his feet, and
+suddenly wagged its tail and put its feet up on him in a friendly
+manifestation of delight.
+
+Its keen sense of scent had apparently recognized that Bart had been a
+visitor to the Wacker home that day. It now took the cracker from Bart's
+hand, then another, and as Bart sat down again stretched itself placidly
+and contentedly at his side.
+
+"This looks all right," ruminated Bart speculatively. "If I can only get
+Christmas to go back the way he came, I feel I have found the right
+trail."
+
+Bart finally arose, and the dog, too. The animal turned its face east,
+wagged its tail expectantly, and eagerly studied Bart's face and
+movements.
+
+As he took a step up the road the animal's tail went down, nerveless,
+and its eyes regarded him beseechingly.
+
+"Come on, old fellow!" hailed Bart encouragingly, patting the dog. It
+followed him reluctantly. Then he made a rollic of it, jumping the
+ditch, racing the animal, stopping abruptly, leaping over it, apparently
+making Christmas forget everything except that it had a friendly
+companion.
+
+At length Bart induced the dog to go ahead. It led the way with evident
+reluctance. It would stop and eye Bart with a decidedly serious eye. He
+urged it forward, and finally it got down to a slow trot, sniffing the
+road and looking altogether out of harmony with its forced course.
+
+Christmas was about twenty yards ahead of Bart at the end of a two
+miles' jaunt, when he shied to the extreme edge of the road and drew to
+his haunches.
+
+Here wagon tracks led into the timber. The road had been used lately,
+Bart soon discerned.
+
+"Come on, Christmas!" he hailed, branching off into the new obscure
+roadway.
+
+The dog circled him, but could not be induced to leave the main road.
+Bart made a grab for the trailing rope. The animal eluded him, gave him
+one reproachful look, turned its nose east, and shot off, headed for
+home like an arrow.
+
+"I've lost my ally," murmured Bart, "but I think I have got my clew.
+Christmas does not like this road, which looks as if he left his captors
+somewhere down its length. I'll try to locate them."
+
+Bart followed the tortuous windings of the narrow road, through brush,
+over hillocks, down into depressions, and finally into the timber.
+
+He came to a clearing, forcing his way past a border of prickly bushes,
+the tops of which seemed freshly broken, as though a wagon had recently
+passed over them.
+
+As he got past them, Bart came to a decisive halt, and stared hard and
+with a thrill of satisfaction.
+
+Twenty feet away, under a spreading tree, a horse was tethered, and
+right near it was a red wagon--holding a trunk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+FOOLING THE ENEMY
+
+
+Our hero's impulse was to at once spring into the wagon and see if the
+trunk was still intact.
+
+A natural cautiousness checked him, however, and he was glad of it a
+minute later as he detected a rustling in the thick undergrowth back of
+the tree.
+
+A human figure seemed suddenly to drop to the ground, and a little
+distance to the left of it Bart was sure he saw two sharp human eyes
+fixed upon him.
+
+He never let on that he suspected for a moment that he was not entirely
+alone, but, walking over to a tree stump, where, spread out on a
+newspaper, was the remains of a lunch, he acted delighted at the
+discovery, picked up a hunk of bread in one hand, a piece of cheese in
+the other, and, throwing himself on the green sward at full length,
+proceeded to munch the eatables, with every semblance of satisfaction.
+
+Bart's mind worked quickly. He felt that it was up to him to play a
+part, and he prepared to do so.
+
+He was morally certain that two persons in fancied hiding were watching
+his every movement, and they must be Buck and Hank Tolliver.
+
+Bart hoped they had never seen him before; he felt pretty certain that
+they did not know him at all.
+
+Bart sprang to his feet. He had thrown his cap back on his head in a
+"sporty," off-handish way, and he tried hard to impersonate a reckless
+young adventurer taking things as they came, and audacious enough to
+pick up a handy meal anyhow or anywhere. He paid not the least apparent
+attention to the wagon or the trunk, although he cast more than one
+sidelong glance in that direction.
+
+He walked up to the horse, stroked its nose, and said boisterously:
+
+"Wish I had this layout--wouldn't I reach California like a nabob,
+though!"
+
+Then Bart went back to the stump. He purposely faced the patch of brush
+where he knew his watchers were lurking.
+
+Ransacking his pockets, with a comical, quizzical grin on his face, he
+produced a solitary nickel, placed it ostentatiously on the tree stump
+and remarked:
+
+"Honesty is the best policy--there you are, landlord! and much obliged
+for the handout."
+
+Then, striking a jaunty dancing step, he started to cross the clearing,
+whistling a jolly tune.
+
+"Hey!"
+
+Bart half expected the summons. He halted in professed wonderment,
+looked up, to the right, to the left, in every direction except that
+from which he was well aware the hail had come.
+
+"Look here, you!"
+
+Bart now turned in the right direction. A man of about thirty had
+revealed himself from the brush.
+
+He had small, bright eyes, a shrewd, narrow face, and Bart knew from
+discription who he was--Buck Tolliver.
+
+"Why, hello! somebody here?" exclaimed Bart, feigning surprise and then
+fright, and he made a movement as if to run for it.
+
+"Don't you bolt," ordered Buck Tolliver, advancing--"come back here,
+kid."
+
+Bart slowly retraced his steps. Then he manifested new alarm as a second
+figure stepped out from the brush.
+
+Recalling what the Millville postmaster had told him, the young express
+agent was quickly aware that this second individual was Buck's brother,
+Hank.
+
+Buck was the spokesman and leader. He came up near to Bart and looked
+him over critically.
+
+"What you doing here?" he demanded, with a suspicious frown.
+
+"Nothing," said Bart, with a grin.
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+"Me--nowhere!" chuckled Bart, winking deliberately and then, walking
+over to the horse, he fondled his long ears, with the remark: "If I had
+a dandy rig like you've got here, I bet I'd go somewheres, though!"
+
+"Where would you go?" inquired Buck Tolliver curiously.
+
+"I'd go to California--that's the place to do something, and make a
+name, and amount to something."
+
+Bart's off-handed ingenuousness had completely disarmed the men. He
+pretended to be busy petting the horse, but saw Buck Tolliver slip back
+to his brother, and a few quick questions and answers passed between
+them. Then Buck came up to him again.
+
+"See here, kid, are you acquainted around here at all?"
+
+"Did you ever see me around here before?" chaffed Bart audaciously.
+
+"Don't get fresh! This is business."
+
+"Why, yes--I reckon I could find my way from Springfield to Bascober."
+
+Bart had mentioned two points miles remote from the Millville district.
+
+"He'll do," spoke Hank Tolliver for the first time. "Ask him, Buck."
+
+"Do you want to drive that rig a few miles for us for a dollar?" asked
+Buck Tolliver.
+
+"Me?" cried Bart. "I guess so!"
+
+"Can you obey orders?"
+
+"Try me, boss."
+
+"He'll do, I tell you. What do you want to waste time this way for!"
+snapped Hank Tolliver irritably.
+
+"Hitch him up," ordered Buck to Bart. "Come on, Hank."
+
+Bart chuckled to himself. He did not know what all this might lead to,
+but it was a famous start.
+
+While he was putting on the horse's harness and hitching him up, the
+brothers spread a piece of canvas over the wagon box. This they tucked
+in, and completely covered trunk and canvas with long grass pulled from
+the edge of a water pit near by.
+
+Bart had the rig in full starting shape by the time they had concluded
+their labors.
+
+"What's the ticket, Captain?" he inquired of Buck, looking him squarely
+in the face.
+
+"You seem to know enough not to answer questions about yourself,"
+observed Buck--"try and be as clever if anybody quizzes you about this
+wagon."
+
+"Why should they?"
+
+"Oh, they may. If they do, you're from--let me see--Blackberry Hill,
+remember?"
+
+"All right--with a load of garden truck, eh?" propounded Bart
+ingeniously.
+
+"You hit it correct. What we want you to do is this: Drive down to the
+main road, and turn west. Keep on straight ahead, and don't turn
+anywhere. About nine miles west you'll hit Hamilton. Drive right through
+the town, but as soon as you get out of it take the first branch south
+from the turnpike, and keep on till you reach an old mill on the river.
+Wait for us there."
+
+"Why," said Bart, "aren't you going with me?"
+
+"No," answered Buck Tolliver definitely.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"None of your business," snapped out Hank.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You mind yours, strictly, or there will be trouble," warned Buck, and
+Bart saw from the look in his hard face that he was a dangerous man,
+once aroused. "You do this job with neatness and dispatch, and it will
+mean a good deal more than a dollar."
+
+"Crackey!" cried Bart, snapping the whip hilariously--"maybe this is one
+of those story-book happenings where a fellow strikes fame and fortune!"
+
+"Maybe it is," assented Buck drily.
+
+Bart climbed up to the seat. He started up the horse, the Tollivers
+following after the wagon till they reached the main road.
+
+"When I get to the mill--" began Bart.
+
+"We'll be there to meet you," announced Buck Tolliver.
+
+"I don't see," growled Hank in an undertone to his brother, "why we
+would take any risk riding under that grass."
+
+"You leave this affair to me," retorted Buck. "If the kid gets through
+all right, then we're all right, aren't we?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"And we've got to wait as we agreed--for Wacker."
+
+Bart had just turned into the main road. At the mention of that ominous
+name, the young express agent brought the whip down upon the horse's
+flanks with a sharp snap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+BART ON THE ROAD
+
+
+"Get up!"
+
+The rig that Bart was driving sped along the dusty country road at a
+good sharp pace.
+
+The young express agent was undergoing the most vivid mental
+perturbation of his career.
+
+He kept whistling a jolly air, with a sidelong glance observed that his
+recent companions had turned back towards their camp in the clearing,
+and then, dropping his assumption of the reckless young adventurer,
+stared seriously ahead and began to figure out the situation in all its
+details.
+
+What had come about was quite natural and ordinary: the Tollivers were
+anxious to get further away from the scene of their recent crime, to a
+safer and more obscure haunt than the open camp in the woods.
+
+They dared not take the journey in the day time, as they did not wish to
+be seen by anyone and Bart coming along, they had caught at the idea of
+sending him on with the wagon and its load.
+
+If Bart got through in safety, they could assume that the hunt for the
+missing trunk was not very active, or had been started in some other
+direction.
+
+Bart had comprehended that they could take a short cut to the old mill.
+He had actually laughed to himself at the ease with which he had
+obtained possession of the trunk, until they had mentioned that ominous
+name: Lem Wacker.
+
+"They are going to wait for Wacker!" murmured Bart, as he urged on the
+horse. "That means that they expect him soon, for they calculate on
+being at the old mill as soon as I can make it by road. When he does
+come, and they tell him about me, he's sure to guess the truth. Then
+it's three to one--get up!"
+
+Bart did not allow the horse to lag, but his best pace was a poor
+shambling trot. All the time Bart thought deeply and practically.
+
+"I have decided," he spoke definitely after a quarter of an hour. "I
+shall turn to my left the first road I come to. The B. & M. does not
+touch short of eight miles from here, but somewhere to the southeast is
+Clyde Station. Once there, I'll risk the rest."
+
+The road was not an easy one. It was not very smooth, and grew more
+stony and rutty as he proceeded, and there was a sharp climb for the
+horse as they reached a hilly landscape.
+
+Bart halted finally. A road branched to the left. It did not look very
+inviting, nor did it seem to be much in use, but as it led away from the
+main highway, it broke the trail, and without hesitation he turned the
+horse's head in the direction of Clyde Station.
+
+The country was open here, all rocks, gullies and pits. He was surprised
+to observe how little distance he had really put between himself and the
+Tolliver camp as the road wound out along the crest of a hill.
+
+He jumped out to lighten the load and coax up the horse. Then he stood
+stock-still, straining his eyes across the valley.
+
+"I declare!" said Bart in a tone of profound concern, "I got away just
+in time, but if that is Lem Wacker, he has appeared on the scene just
+ten minutes too soon to suit me."
+
+Over at the break in the woods a man had appeared from the direction of
+Millville. He was waving a hand, and then placing it to his mouth as
+though hailing someone, probably the Tollivers at the camp.
+
+Then he turned straight around. If Bart could read anything at that
+distance, he could certainly trace that the man was looking fixedly at
+the red wagon, and the white horse, and himself.
+
+If it was Lem Wacker--and Bart believed that it was--just one thing was
+in order: to get that trunk to some town, to some station, to some
+friendly farmhouse, in hiding anywhere, before the pursuit, sure to
+follow, was started.
+
+Bart ran on, with a last glance at the lone distant figure. He could not
+afford to wait to see if the Tollivers joined it. Every minute was
+precious.
+
+"Where is the horse?" exclaimed Bart.
+
+Dobbin had "got up." While Bart was surveying the landscape, the old
+animal had plodded on, and was now out of sight.
+
+Bart ran along the road. It turned between two walls of slate. Then came
+the open again. Here the road descended somewhat. The horse stood at a
+halt. He had run easily a few rods, one wheel had struck a deep rut, and
+the wagon had broken down. It lay tilted over on one side, one wheel
+completely caved in.
+
+Bart was dismayed. He reflected for a moment, and then followed the road
+ahead for about a hundred feet.
+
+It turned through some slate heaps, lined the side of a deep
+excavation, and came to an abrupt end where some boards, placed
+crosswise, barred the sheer descent.
+
+Just such a valley spread out beyond the barrier as on the other edge of
+the hill whence Bart had seen the man he believed to be Lem Wacker.
+
+Here, however, the landscape was barren in the extreme. There was not a
+house visible.
+
+Bart was in a dilemma, but he decided how he would act. He first ran
+back to the spot whence he had last viewed the break in the woods.
+
+A glance stirred him up to prompt and decisive action.
+
+Three men were now in view. They were running at their top bent of speed
+up the road he had taken.
+
+"Lem Wacker and the Tollivers, sure!" murmured Bart. "They know the
+wagon is up here somewhere, and they will be here in less than half an
+hour."
+
+Bart's one idea now was to locate some pit or cranny where he could stow
+the trunk where it could not be readily found.
+
+This done, he would start on foot in the direction of Clyde Station to
+get assistance and return before his enemies discovered it.
+
+There were all kinds of holes and heaps around him, but too open and
+public to his way of thinking. Exploring, he came to the board barrier
+again, climbed over it, and more critically than before scanned the
+fifty-foot descent, and what lay at the bottom.
+
+"Why!" said Bart, in some astonishment, "there's a railroad track--"
+
+He leaned over, and scrutinizingly ran his eye along the dull brown
+stretch of raised rails.
+
+"And a hand car!" shouted the young express agent joyfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A LIMB OF THE LAW
+
+
+The single track which Bart had discovered lined the bottom of the hill,
+followed it for a distance, and then running across the valley
+disappeared in among other hills and the timber.
+
+It was a rickety concern, was unballasted, and looked as if, loosely
+thrown together, it had never filled its original mission and had been
+practically abandoned.
+
+"I don't know of any branch of the B. & M. hereabouts," ruminated the
+young express agent--"certainly none corresponding to this is on the
+map. It is not in regular use, but that hand car looks as if it was
+doing service right along."
+
+No one was in sight about the place, yet lying in plain view on the hand
+car were three or four coats and jumpers and as many dinner pails.
+
+"I have no time to figure it out," breathed Bart quickly. "The first
+thing to do is to get the trunk down there."
+
+Bart ran back to the wagon. He hurriedly pulled away the grass covering
+and then the canvas.
+
+The trunk was revealed. He had his first full glance at it since it had
+been delivered to him at the express office at Pleasantville, the
+afternoon previous.
+
+"It's all right," he said with satisfaction, after a critical
+inspection. "There is the paster I slapped over the front. The trunk
+could not have been opened without tearing that."
+
+He got a good purchase on a handle and landed the trunk in the road.
+Then he dragged it up to the barrier, removed a board, and, perspiring
+and breathing hard, held it at the sheer edge of the decline and let it
+slide.
+
+The hand car was a light-running affair, well-greased, in pretty good
+order, and he could readily observe was in constant use.
+
+Upon it lay the clothing and dinner pails he had noticed from overhead.
+They evidently belonged to workmen--but where were they?
+
+"I can hardly wait to find out," declared Bart.
+
+He pushed off the clothing and dinner pails and lifted on the trunk.
+
+Then Bart made a depressing discovery--the hind gearing was locked with
+a chain running from wheel to wheel.
+
+This was unfortunate. Turning a heap of slate, he came suddenly and with
+delight upon an open tool box.
+
+It was a regular construction case, and full of shovels, crowbars,
+pickaxes, sledges and drills. Bart selected a crowbar and his efforts to
+twist and snap the chain resulted in final success. With a thrill of
+satisfaction he sprang upon the car. The handles moved easily and
+responsively to the touch.
+
+A grumbling roar caused him to survey the sky, which had been dull and
+lowering since noon.
+
+"Storm coming," he murmured--"now for action!"
+
+Bart started up the car. It ran as smooth as a bicycle. He was anxious
+to get away from the face of the hill, not knowing how near the enemy
+might be.
+
+They were nearer than he fancied, for a sudden shout rang out, then a
+chorus of them.
+
+A piece of rock, hurled down from the crest of the hill, struck his
+wrist, nearly numbing it. Glancing up, Bart saw the two Tollivers and
+Lem Wacker getting ready to descend.
+
+There was a sharp incline and a short curve not ten feet ahead. Bart
+let the hand car drive at its own impetus.
+
+"Stop!" yelled Buck Tolliver.
+
+He held some object in his hand. Bart crouched by the side of the
+pumping standard, and the hand car spun out on the tracks crossing the
+valley, just as the thunder-storm broke forth in all its fury.
+
+Bart's back was to the wind, and the wind helped his progress. As the
+tracks led into the timber, Bart took a last glance backwards, but rain
+and mist shut out all sight of the hill and his enemies.
+
+He had no idea as to the terminus or connections of the railroad, but
+never relaxed his efforts as long as clear tracks showed beyond.
+
+Bart must have gone six or seven miles, when he saw ahead some scattered
+houses, then a church steeple and a water tower, and he caught the echo
+of a locomotive whistle.
+
+"It's the B. & M., and that is Lisle Station!" he soliloquized with
+unbounded satisfaction.
+
+Fifteen minutes later, wringing wet with rain and perspiration, Bart
+drove the hand car up to a bumper just behind a little country depot,
+and leaped to the ground.
+
+"Hello!" hailed a man inside, the station agent, staring hard at him
+through an open window.
+
+Bart nodded calmly, consulting his watch and calculating mentally in a
+rapid way.
+
+"See here," he said briskly, "this is Lisle Station?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"On the B. & M. Then the afternoon express is due here from the east in
+twelve minutes."
+
+"You seem to be well-posted."
+
+"I ought to be," answered Bart--"I am the express agent at
+Pleasantville."
+
+"What!" ejaculated the man incredulously.
+
+"Yes," nodded Bart, smiling. "Won't you help me get this trunk to the
+platform?"
+
+The station agent came outside and lent a hand as suggested, but he
+remarked:
+
+"The express doesn't stop here."
+
+"Flag it."
+
+"My orders--"
+
+"Won't interfere, in this case," insisted Bart. "That trunk has got two
+thousand dollars worth of stuff in it, and was stolen. I recovered it,
+the thieves are after me, and it has got to go to Cedar Lake on Number
+18."
+
+"Well! well! well!" muttered the station agent in a daze, but hastening
+to place the stop signal.
+
+Bart went inside and unceremoniously approached the office desk. He
+wrote on a slip of paper, placed it in his pocket, shifted the trunk to
+the head end of the platform, and stationed himself beside it.
+
+"Is all that you're telling me true?" propounded the bewildered station
+agent, sidling up to Bart's side.
+
+"Every word of it."
+
+"Where did you get the hand car?"
+
+"I found it. Oh, by the way! I wish you would explain to me about that
+railroad; what is it, what excuse has it got for existing?"
+
+"Oh, that?" said the station agent "It's the old quarry spur. A company
+built it five years ago with grand plans for shipping mottled tiling
+slate all over the country. Their money gave out and the scheme was
+never put through."
+
+"And the hand car?"
+
+"There's four men who live here who got the privilege of digging out
+slate for a big plumbers' supply house in the city. They go to the
+quarry and back on the hand car daily. Did they loan it to you?"
+
+"No," said Bart, "I was in a hurry, and had to borrow it without
+permission."
+
+"They'll have a fine walk back here in this storm!"
+
+"I was going to suggest," said Bart, taking half a dollar from his
+pocket, "that you might hire some boy to run the hand car back to the
+quarry."
+
+"I can do that," answered the station agent.
+
+Number 18 came sailing down the rails. As she slowed up, everyone on
+duty from the fireman to the brakeman was on the lookout for the cause
+of the unusual stop.
+
+The conductor jumped off and ran up to the station agent, and while the
+latter was busy explaining the situation Bart hammered on the door of
+the express car.
+
+"Why it's Stirling!" cried old Ben Travers, the veteran express
+messenger, sliding back the door.
+
+"You're right, Mr. Travers," assented Bart. "Here's a special and
+urgent. Get it aboard before the conductor comes up and jumps all over
+me for stopping the train."
+
+Travers popped down in a lively fashion. They hoisted the trunk together
+and sent it spinning into the car.
+
+"Cedar Lake, make a sure delivery, Mr. Travers," directed Bart. "Here,
+put your manifesto on that receipt, will you?" and Bart drew the slip of
+paper he had written on in the depot from his pocket.
+
+The conductor, a pompous, self-contained old fellow, started towards
+Bart to haul him over the coals, but Bart wisely walked farther down the
+platform, the conductor gave the go-ahead signal and shook his fist
+sternly at Bart, while the latter with a gay, relieved laugh waved him
+back a cheery, courteous good-by.
+
+Bart told the station agent a very little about the history of the
+trunk. He left a dollar to pay for the broken hand car lock. He was in
+high spirits as he caught the east bound train. The whistles were
+blowing for a quarter of six as he reached Pleasantville and leaped from
+the engine, where a friendly engineer had given him a free ride, and in
+three minutes was at the door of the little express office.
+
+Animated voices reached him from the inside. Bart peered beyond the
+threshold.
+
+McCarthy, the night watchman, sat asleep in a chair in a corner. Darry
+Haven was at the desk, a spruce, solemn-faced young man beside him.
+
+"I'm here, Darry," announced Bart.
+
+Darry turned with a joyful face. It fell as he glanced beyond his young
+employer to the empty platform.
+
+"No trunk!" he murmured in a low, disappointed tone.
+
+"Too heavy to carry around, you see!" smiled Bart lightly. "Who is this
+gentleman? Oh, I see--good afternoon, Mr. Stuart."
+
+"Afternoon," crisply answered the stranger.
+
+He was a young limb of the law, employed since the previous year in the
+office of Judge Monroe, the principal attorney of Pleasantville.
+
+Stuart was a butt for even the well-meaning boys of the town. He was
+only nineteen, but he affected the dignity of a sage of sixty, seeming
+to have the idea that nothing but a severe and forbidding manner could
+represent the high and lofty calling he had condescended to follow.
+
+"Ah," he observed, turning upon Bart and critically adjusting a single
+eyeglass, "is this the express agent?"
+
+"That's me," assented Bart bluntly.
+
+"I represent Monroe, Purcell & Abernethy, Attorneys," grandly announced
+Stuart. "We are employed by Mrs. Harrington to prosecute an inquiry as
+to a missing trunk."
+
+Darry looked very serious, Bart smiled serenely in the face of his
+imperturbable visitor.
+
+"What is there to prosecute, Mr. Stuart?" he inquired.
+
+"We have come to demand certified copies of all entries and receipts of
+this office covering the trunk in question," announced the young sprig
+of the law.
+
+"Well?" interrogated Bart.
+
+"Your employee--assistant? here, declined to act without your
+authority."
+
+"Quite right. I give it, though. Darry, make out transcripts of the
+records. That is all clear and regular."
+
+Bart turned on his heel, ran his eye over the office books, and bored
+young Mr. Stuart terribly by paying no further attention to him.
+
+The latter stood watching the industrious Darry with owl-like solemnity.
+Finally the latter handed a duplicate receipt and a copy of the entry to
+Stuart.
+
+"Will you officially attest to the correctness of these, Mr.--Ah, Mr.
+Agent?" propounded Stuart.
+
+"Sure," answered Bart with an off-handed alacrity that was distressing
+to the responsibility burdened personality of the accredited
+representative of Monroe, Purcell & Abernethy.
+
+He dashed off an O.K. on the two documents, tendered them with
+exaggerated courtesy to his visitor, who he was well aware knew his name
+perfectly, and said, with the faintest suggestion of mimicry:
+
+"Ah, Mr.--Representative, would you kindly inform me for what purpose
+you want these transcripts?"
+
+"They form the basis of a criminal prosecution," announced young Stuart
+in a tone positively sepulchral.
+
+"So?" murmured the young express agent smoothly. "In that case, let me
+suggest that you also take a copy of this document to submit to
+your--superiors."
+
+Bart Stirling drew from his pocket the receipt signed by old Ben Travers
+on the afternoon express less than two hours previous.
+
+Stuart adjusted his eyeglass and superciliously regarded the document.
+Then he turned and gasped:
+
+"What--what is this?" he spluttered.
+
+"A receipt for the delivery of the basis of your criminal prosecution,"
+said Bart simply. "Mrs. Colonel Harrington's trunk is safe and sound on
+its way to its destination."
+
+"Hurrah!" irresistibly shouted Darry Haven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+BART STIRLING, AUCTIONEER
+
+
+It was "busy times" at the little express office at Pleasantville.
+
+Bart had made home and lunch in half the noon hour, and entered upon a
+renewal of his duties with a brisk hail to his subordinates and
+assistants, Darry and Bob Haven.
+
+On that especial day the services of both had been required. They had
+arranged to give their full time, and Bart noted that never were there
+more industrious and enthusiastic colleagues.
+
+There was the sound of active hammering as Bart entered the office,
+which Darry suspended long enough to remark:
+
+"How's that for the audience?"
+
+The office space proper containing the desk and the safe had been railed
+off, the express stuff in and out packed conveniently in one corner,
+and thus three-quarters of the room was given up solely to the
+requirements of the day.
+
+A dozen rough benches filled in half the space. Its other half, also
+railed off, held a heap of packages, bundles, boxes, barrels, a mass of
+heterogeneous plunder, packed up neatly, and convenient for handling.
+
+Beside it was a raised platform, and this in turn held a rough board
+table on which lay a home-made gavel, and beside this was a high desk
+holding a blank book and a tin box.
+
+What was "coming off" was the much advertised unclaimed package sale of
+the express company.
+
+Bart had followed out the instructions received from Mr. Leslie, the
+superintendent, when he first took charge of the office at
+Pleasantville, and the sale and its details had been quite an element in
+his life during the past three weeks.
+
+The various small offices in the division had sent in their uncalled for
+express matter, and this was now grouped under the present roof.
+
+Mr. Haven, an ex-editor, had written up a good "puff" for a local paper,
+inserted gratis an exciting comment and anticipation in reference to the
+impending sale, and Darry and Bob had printed fifteen hundred dodgers on
+their home press, very neat and presentable in appearance, and these
+had been judiciously distributed for miles around, and posted up in
+stores and depots.
+
+Bart had heard nothing further from the Harringtons--not even the echo
+of a "thank you" had reached him. Pleasantville for a day or two had
+been full of rumors as to the express robbery, but Bart decided to say
+very little about it, and only his intimate friends knew the actual
+circumstances.
+
+McCarthy, the night watchman, however, accidentally spread Bart's fame
+in the right direction. He had a cousin working for the express company
+in the city to whom he told the story. It got to the ears of the
+superintendent of the express company.
+
+Bart received a letter from Mr. Leslie the next day, requiring a
+circumstantial report of the stolen trunk. He answered this and received
+a prompt reply, directing him thereafter to always report such
+happenings at once, but his zeal and shrewdness were heartily commended,
+and a check for twenty-five dollars for extra services was inclosed.
+
+The twenty-five dollars Bart received was the nest egg of a fund being
+saved up for his father's benefit.
+
+Mr. Stirling could now distinguish night from day, and in a few weeks
+they intended to take him to an expert oculist in the city for special
+treatment.
+
+Amid all this encouragement, Bart's life was filled with contentment and
+earnest endeavor, and he tried to deserve the good fortune that was his
+lot, and fulfill every duty thoroughly. About a week before the present
+time he had received a brief letter from his roustabout friend, Baker,
+dated from a town about fifty miles away, telling him that he had been
+working on a steady job, but had some business in Pleasantville in a few
+days, and asked Bart to write him as to the whereabouts of Colonel
+Harrington.
+
+Bart had replied to this letter, wondering what mystery could possibly
+connect this homeless vagabond and the great ruling magnate of
+Pleasantville.
+
+"Now then, my friends," said Bart briskly, as he saw to it that
+everything was in order for the sale, "the motto for the hour is quick
+action and cash on delivery!"
+
+About two o'clock there were several arrivals. Half an hour later the
+place was pretty well filled. There were several village storekeepers,
+some traveling men from the hotel, and railroad men off duty.
+
+Nearly a dozen country rigs drove up to the platform, and the rural
+population was well represented.
+
+At three o'clock prompt, as advertised, Bart ascended the little
+platform and took up the gavel.
+
+Just then he nodded at a newcomer who entered the doorway and quietly
+took a seat. It was Mr. Baker.
+
+Bart was more pleased than surprised to see him. He had anticipated his
+arrival the last two days.
+
+Bart tapped the table to call the crowd to order and silence.
+
+Then he looked again at the doorway, and this time with vivid interest.
+
+He saw Lem Wacker shuffle into view, glance keenly around, fix his eye
+on Baker, and steal into the room and sit down directly behind that
+mysterious individual.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+"GOING, GOING, GONE!"
+
+
+Bart made a first-class auctioneer--everybody said so after the sale was
+over, and the pleased grins and the good-natured attention of his
+audience assured the young novice of this as he concluded the
+introductory speech.
+
+He had prepared a simple, witty preface to actual business, telling many
+truths of people who had spent a few cents for what had turned out to be
+worth many dollars, and inviting a good many guesses by hinting what
+might be in the heap upon which all eyes were fixed intently.
+
+"Number 1129," said Bart, after taking a brief breathing spell.
+
+Bob Haven lifted a box about two feet square to the table.
+
+"Shipped to William Brothers, Ross Junction," announced Bart, reading
+the tag, "not found. Come, gentlemen! what am I bid for lot 1129?"
+
+"What's in it?" inquired a big farmer sitting near the front.
+
+"You will have to guess that," answered Bart pleasantly. "Ah! some kind
+of liquid, I should imagine," and he shook the box, its contents echoing
+out a mellow, gurgling sound.
+
+"Mebbe it's paint, Samantha?" suggested the farmer to his wife. "There'd
+be two gallons of it--enough to cover the smokehouse. Ten cents."
+
+"The charges are eighty-five," explained Bart--"can't start it any
+lower."
+
+A blear-eyed, unsteady individual, whom Bart recognized as a member of
+the Sharp Corner contingent, advanced to the table.
+
+He was thirsty-looking and eager as he poked at the box and tried to
+peer into it.
+
+"A demijohn!" he muttered, his mouth watering. "Two gallons--probably
+prime old stuff. Eighty-five cents."
+
+"Eighty-five--eighty-five!" repeated Bart.
+
+"Ninety," said the farmer.
+
+"Dollar!" mumbled the thirsty-looking man.
+
+"Do I hear any more?" challenged Bart, gavel suspended, "once, twice,
+and sold to--cash."
+
+The inebriate paid his money, chuckled and took the box to one side,
+hugging it like a pet child, reached over and picked up the hatchet
+from inside the railing, and pried open the corner of the box.
+
+A gleesome roar of merriment interrupted Bart as he called out the
+second lot.
+
+The inebriate stood disgustedly looking down at the label on the
+demijohn he had brought to light: "Bubbly Spring Mineral Water."
+
+Lot 943 was a cardboard box. The suggestion of millinery made the
+farmer's wife a reckless bidder, and the lot brought two dollars.
+
+Another roar went up from the crowd as she eagerly inspected her
+purchase. It turned out to be a man's silk hat.
+
+She looked spiteful enough to throw it out of the window, but her
+husband, laughing at her, doffed his worn straw, coolly put on the
+elaborate headgear, and became thenceforward a target for the quips of
+the merry idlers about the door.
+
+An oblong crate brought four dollars. Bob Haven got this. He did not
+inspect his purchase at once, but with glowing eyes whispered to his
+brother as he pushed it to one side that he knew it was a new bicycle.
+
+Bart hustled the various packages up for sale and disposition with
+briskness and dispatch, and Darry was more than busy keeping tab on his
+record book and piling the cash into the tin box.
+
+One fuming, perspiring man, looking too fat to ever get cool, found the
+prize he had drawn was a moth-eaten fur overcoat.
+
+Peter Grimm, notoriously the stingiest man in Pleasantville, who raised
+the sourest apples in the town and spent most of his time watching the
+boys and picking up what fruit rolled outside of the fence, bided his
+time with watchful ferret eyes until a promising-looking package came
+along.
+
+It was bid up pretty high, and the crowd urged him to disclose his
+treasure, but Grimm was not responsive to any mutual human sentiment and
+sat down with the package in his lap.
+
+He began a secret inspection, however, gradually working off the paper
+covering at one end, and with snapping eyes worming his fingers inside
+the parcel.
+
+Suddenly a sharp click echoed out, followed by a frightful yell.
+
+Grimm sprang to his feet, jumping quickly about and swinging one arm
+wildly through the air, the parcel dangling from it like a bulldog
+hanging on to a coat tail.
+
+"Murder!" he screamed. "Take it off! take it off!"
+
+Bart had to step down to the rescue. Peter Grimm had drawn a patent
+mink trap, and was its first victim. He sneaked from the express office
+nursing his crushed fingers and kicking his unlucky purchase out into
+the road.
+
+The pile of unclaimed stuff diminished rapidly. The various purchases
+were productive of all kinds of fun. Tom Partridge, the colored porter
+at the hotel, got a case of face powder, and an exquisite traveling man
+for a lace house drew a pair of rubber boots that would fit a giant.
+
+One man disclosed his purchase to be a setting of eggs. They were packed
+in cotton and intact, though probably a year old.
+
+"Take them out--take them out," yelled the crowd.
+
+Somebody dropped a piece of wood in the box, and there was a pop. The
+farmer with the plug hat he-hawed at the top of his voice, the miserable
+owner of the eggs got mad at him, some words ensued, the farmer started
+after him, the egg owner ran, once outside fired an egg which struck the
+smooth, shiny tile with a splatter, and the farmer came back into the
+express office holding his nose, bareheaded, and looking for his
+rejected straw head-covering.
+
+Some, however, were more fortunate. Bart encouraged and hurried the
+bidding on a large crate, the contents of which he easily guessed, as
+did also Tim Hager, the crippled son of a poor widow. Tim got it for two
+dollars and twenty-five cents, and it turned out to hold a first-class
+sewing machine.
+
+"Your attention for a few moments, gentlemen," called out Bart as there
+was a hustle on the part of the audience getting together the mass of
+stuff they had bought. "All the unclaimed heavy express matter at
+Pleasantville was burned up in the fire of July third, but some twenty
+small parcels were in the safe, and those we will now dispose of."
+
+"Money, jewelry, and such, I suppose?" propounded Lawyer Stebbings, who
+loaned money at a high rate of interest.
+
+"We make no such representations," responded Bart. "I will say this,
+that no money packages are among the lot. There may be valuable papers,
+there may be jewelry--in fact, some of the parcels have a given value up
+to two hundred dollars--but the express company guarantees nothing and
+you bid at your own risk."
+
+"Good! let's have a sample," demanded Stebbings. "Can I examine? Ah,
+thanks."
+
+The crowd passed from hand to hand a small well-wrapped package.
+
+"Watch!" hoarsely whispered someone.
+
+"Feels like it!" said a second.
+
+Stebbings bid the lot up to four dollars and got it. There was more fun
+as he unrolled the numerous wrappings of the package to disclose a small
+metal disc used in a threshing machine.
+
+One purchaser got a gold pen, another a very pretty stick pin.
+
+Lem Wacker had not engaged in the general commotion. He had retained his
+place on a bench, looking bored, but for some reason sitting out the
+session, and Bart wondered why.
+
+Baker took a mild interest in what was going on, smiling appreciatively
+once in a while when Bart made a witty hit or an unusually good sale.
+
+Finally, however, Wacker put up his forefinger as Bart was bidding off a
+thin wooden box about four inches square.
+
+"Sender: Novelty Jewelry Company, no address," read Bart, "shipped to
+James Barclay, Millville--not found. This is a promising-looking
+package. Gentlemen, what am I bid?"
+
+Lem Wacker seemed to have some spare cash, for he paid two dollars for
+the box, swaggered off with it, and opening it disclosed a very small
+and neat pocket alarm clock.
+
+He wound it up, sent out its silvery call once or twice for the
+edification of the crowd about him, hoping to sell it off to someone,
+and then, there being no purchaser, with a disappointed grunt slipped it
+into his pocket.
+
+"Number 529," announced Bart a few minutes later--"the last package,
+gentlemen!"
+
+The crowd was dispersing, Darry was counting up the heap of bank notes
+and coin in the cash box, Bob was gloating and wild with delight as
+uncovering his purchase he brought to light a new bicycle.
+
+The package Bart tendered was thin and flat. Two tough pieces of
+cardboard held it stiff and straight. It seemed to contain papers of
+some kind, and so many bidders had bought old deeds, contracts, plans,
+manuscripts and the like, utterly valueless to them, that the lot hung
+at twenty-five cents for several minutes.
+
+"Come, come, gentlemen!" urged Bart--"the last may be the best. The
+charges are sixty-five cents. Sender's name not given. Directed to 'A.A.
+Adams, Pleasantville'--not found."
+
+"Hoo! S--s--say!"
+
+Bart experienced something of a shock.
+
+The familiar cry of the ex-roustabout, Mr. Baker, rang out sharp and
+sudden.
+
+Glancing at him, Bart saw that he had arisen to his feet.
+
+His face was bloodless and twitching, his whole frame a-quake. His eyes
+were snapping wildly. He was like a man who could hardly speak or stand,
+and fairly on the verge of a fit.
+
+A wavering finger he pointed at the young auctioneer, and gasped out.
+
+"One dollar--two--three!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+MR. BAKER'S BID
+
+
+The attitude, actions and announcement of the mysterious Mr. Baker
+filled Bart Stirling with profound surprise and wonderment.
+
+The young express agent well knew the erratic temperment of his singular
+friend, but Baker had been so placid and natural up to the present
+moment, and this excitable outburst was so vivid and unaccountable, that
+Bart felt sure that there was some important reason for the same.
+
+All eyes were now fixed on Baker. He seemed to put a dramatic climax to
+a varied entertainment, and appeared unconscious of everything except
+the package Bart held in his hand. His eyes were fixed upon this
+steadfastly--they seemed to burn right into it.
+
+Lem Wacker had also arisen to his feet. Bart noticed him intently
+studying Baker, sidling up to him and sinking to the bench directly next
+to him.
+
+There was a suspiciousness in the action that enhanced Bart's interest
+and curiosity, but he preserved his composure.
+
+"Three dollars, did you say?" he inquired, in an insinuating and
+soothing, but strictly business tone.
+
+"Yes!" gasped out Baker.
+
+"I am bid--"
+
+"Four."
+
+Bart looked fixedly at Lem Wacker, for it was he who had spoken. Darry
+Haven dropped the cover of the cash box, and also stared at Wacker.
+There was something suggestive in the sensation of the moment.
+
+Lem Wacker's face was as bold as brass. He was dressed pretty well and
+looked prosperous, and there was a mean sneer on his lips as he
+shamelessly returned the glance of the boy he had wronged, defiantly
+relying, apparently, on some reserved power he fancied he possessed.
+
+Baker did not even look at the rival bidder. His very soul seemed
+centered on the package in Bart's hand.
+
+"Five," he uttered with an effort--"six, seven!"
+
+"Eight," said Wacker calmly, striking a cigarette between his lips.
+
+"Ten."
+
+"Twelve."
+
+Baker was silent. A frightful spasm crossed his face. He swayed from
+side to side. Then, grasping at the bench rails to steady himself, he
+came up to the platform.
+
+"Stirling!" he panted hoarsely, "I have no more money, but I must--must
+have that package! Lend me--"
+
+"Whatever you wish," answered Bart promptly.
+
+"Fifteen dollars!" said Baker.
+
+Lem Wacker jumped to his feet, excited. He shot a hand into a pocket,
+drew it out again holding a pocketbook, ran over its contents, and
+shouted!
+
+"Sixteen dollars!"
+
+"Twenty!" cried Baker.
+
+"I am offered twenty dollars," said Bart, outwardly cool as a cucumber,
+inwardly greatly perturbed over the incident in hand, and hastening to
+close it in favor of a friend. "Twenty dollars once, twenty dollars
+twice--"
+
+"Stop!" yelled Lem Wacker.
+
+"Do you bid more?" asked Bart.
+
+"I--I do!"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Double--treble--if I have to!" retorted Wacker. "Only I want you to
+wait until I can get the cash. I have only sixteen dollars with me--I
+can get a hundred and sixty in two minutes, I--"
+
+"Terms strictly cash," said Bart simply. "Going, going, at twenty
+dollars--"
+
+"Hold on! Don't you dare!" raved Wacker, swinging his arms about like a
+windmill. "I demand that this sale be suspended until I can get further
+funds."
+
+"Twenty dollars--gone!" sung out Bart in the same business tone, "and
+sold to--cash."
+
+With a sigh of relief and weakness Baker swayed sideways to a bench,
+first extending to Darry Haven with a shaking hand a little roll of
+bills.
+
+"Charge me with the balance," said Bart quickly to his assistant, in a
+low tone.
+
+"You've no right!" raved Lem Wacker loudly, shaking his fist at Bart,
+and in a passion of uncontrollable rage. "You'll suffer for this! I
+protest against this sale--I demand that you do not deliver that
+package, you young snob! you--"
+
+Lem Wacker was getting abusive. He pranced about like a mad bull.
+
+A heavy hand dropped suddenly on his collar, McCarthy, the watchman,
+gave him a shove towards the door.
+
+"No talk of that kind allowed here," he remarked grimly. "Get out, or
+I'll fire you out!"
+
+As Wacker disappeared through the doorway, Bart leaned from the
+platform.
+
+"Here is your package, Mr. Baker," he said. "What is the trouble--are
+you ill?"
+
+Baker struggled to his feet. He was in a pitiable state of agitation and
+nervousness.
+
+"No! no!" he panted, "you keep the package--for a time. Till--till I
+explain. I've got it! I've got it at last!" he quavered in an exultant
+tone. "Air--I'm choking! I--I'll be back soon--"
+
+He rushed to the door overcome, like a man on the verge of a fit.
+
+Bart started to follow him. Just then, however, one of the recent
+bidders came up to ask some question about a purchase which required
+that Bart consult the record book.
+
+When he had disposed of the matter, Bart hurried to the outside. Baker
+was nowhere in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A NIGHT MESSAGE
+
+
+The crowd had melted away, Bob Haven was totally engrossed with the
+magnificent prize he had drawn, and Darry was busily engaged in closing
+up the records of the sale.
+
+Bart was thoroughly mystified at the strange conduct of Baker, and very
+much disappointed at not finding him, now that he sought the mysterious
+man.
+
+McCarthy had gone home, and Lem Wacker was not in evidence. Some boys
+were guarding a pile of stuff that had been purchased and thrown aside.
+Bart set at work cleaning up the package coverings that littered the
+place inside and outside.
+
+Things were back to normal when the afternoon express came in. It was
+nearly two hours late, and closing time.
+
+There was the usual grist of store packages, which Darry attended to,
+and several special envelopes. These Bart placed in the safe along with
+the proceeds of the day derived from the sale, barely glancing over the
+duplicate receipt he had signed for the messenger.
+
+He noticed that two of the specials were for the local bank, and the
+third for the big pickle factory of Martin & Company, at the edge of the
+town.
+
+"Both closed up by this time," ruminated Bart. "We can't deliver
+to-night. Anything very urgent among that stuff, Darry?"
+
+"Nothing," replied his young assistant.
+
+"You can go home, then," directed Bart. "Pretty tired, eh? A big day's
+work, this."
+
+"Say, Bart," spoke up Darry, as he dallied at the door, "who was the
+fellow that bought that last package?"
+
+"A friend of mine, Darry," answered Bart seriously. "And I am worried
+about him. He is the man I told you about who helped me save my father
+the night of the fire."
+
+"He acted very queerly. And Lem Wacker, too," added Darry thoughtfully.
+"Is something new up, Bart? The way Wacker carried on, he seemed to have
+some idea in his head."
+
+"He had the idea he could bulldoze me," said Bart bluntly, "and found
+he couldn't. What bothers me is, why were both of them so anxious to get
+this package?"
+
+Bart took it out of his pocket as he spoke, nodded good night to Darry,
+and sat down on a bench, turning the parcel over and over in his hand.
+
+"A.A. Adams," he read from the tag, "a queer name, and no one answering
+to it here in Pleasantville. I wonder why Baker was so excited when he
+heard that name? I wonder why Lem Wacker bid it up? Is he aware of the
+mystery surrounding Baker? Has this package got something to do with it?
+Wacker looked as though he had struck a prosperous streak, and bragged
+recklessly about the lot of money he could get. I must find Baker. He
+was in no condition, mentally or physically, to wander about at random."
+
+The package in question, Bart decided, held papers. It had been given
+him in trust, and he could not open it without Baker's permission. He
+replaced it in his pocket and went forth.
+
+Bart visited all of Baker's old familiar haunts in the freight yards,
+but found no trace of him. Then he called at the Sharp Corner. Its
+proprietor claimed that Lem Wacker had not been there since noon.
+
+Bart spoke to two of the yards night watchmen. He described Baker, and
+requested them to speak to him if they ran across him, and to tell him
+that Bart Stirling was very anxious to see him up at his house.
+
+Affairs at the little express office had settled down to routine when,
+one morning, Darry Haven dropped into the place.
+
+He found Bart engrossed in reading a letter very carefully. Its envelope
+lay on the desk. Glancing at it casually, Darry saw that it was from
+express headquarters.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he inquired, as Bart folded up the letter and placed
+it in his pocket.
+
+"Not with me, anyway," replied Bart with a smile. "There is something
+wrong at Cardysville, a hundred miles or so down the main line," he went
+on.
+
+"And how does that interest you, Bart?"
+
+"Why, it seems I have got to go down there on some business for the
+Company."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"The sooner the better, that letter says. It is from the inspector. It
+is quite flattering to me, for he starts out with complimenting the
+excellent business system this office has always sustained."
+
+"H'm!" chuckled Darry--"any mention of your valued extra help?"
+
+"No, but that may come along, for you have got to represent me here
+again to-day, and possibly to-morrow."
+
+"Is that so?" said Darry. "Well, I guess I can arrange."
+
+"You see," explained Bart, "the letter is a sort of confidential one.
+Reading between the lines, I assume that a certain Peter Pope, now
+express agent at Cardysville, and evidently recently appointed, is a
+relative of one of the officials of the company. Anyway, he has been
+running--or not running--things for a week. The inspector writes that
+the man has very little to do, for it is a small station, but that very
+little he appears to do very badly."
+
+"How, Bart?"
+
+"His reports and returns are all mixed up. He doesn't have the least
+idea of how to run things intelligently. The inspector asks me to go and
+see him, take some of our blanks, open a set of books for him, and try
+and install a system that will bring things around clearer."
+
+"Why, Bart," exclaimed Darry, "they have promoted you!"
+
+"I don't see it, Darry."
+
+"That's traveling auditor's work. Besides, a delicate and confidential
+mission for an official. Wake up! you've struck a higher rung on the
+ladder, and I'll wager they'll boost you fast."
+
+"Nonsense, Darry, I happen to be handy and accommodating, and they don't
+want to turn the fellow down on account of his 'pull.' Maybe they think
+the offer and suggestions of a boy will have a result where a regular
+official visit would offend Mr. Peter Pope's backer--see?"
+
+All the same, Bart felt very much pleased over this unexpected
+communication. He blessed his lucky stars that he had such a bright and
+dependable substitute at hand as Darry Haven.
+
+The latter soon made his school and home arrangements, and Bart left
+affairs in his hands about ten o'clock, catching the train west after
+getting a pass for the Cardysville round trip.
+
+It was two o'clock when the train arrived at Bart's destination. He
+found Cardysville to be a place of about 2,000 inhabitants. Most of the
+town, however, lay half-a-mile away from the B. & M. Railroad, another
+line cutting in farther north.
+
+Bart noticed crowds of people and a circus tent in the distance. The
+express shed was a gloomy little den of a place on a spur track. Near
+the depot was a small lunch counter. Bart got something to eat, and
+strolled down the tracks.
+
+As he drew near to the express shed, Bart noticed an old armchair out on
+its platform.
+
+A very stout man in his shirt sleeves sat in this, smoking a pipe.
+
+He got up and waddled around restlessly. Bart noticed that he approached
+the door of the express office on tiptoe. He acted scared, for, bending
+his ear to listen, he retreated precipitately. Then he stood
+stock-still, staring stupidly at the building.
+
+He gave a nervous start as Bart came up behind him--quite a jump, in
+fact. Bart, studying his flabby, uneasy face, wondered what was the
+matter with the man.
+
+"Hello!" jerked out the Cardysville express agent. "Sort of startled
+me."
+
+"Are you Mr. Pope?" inquired Bart.
+
+"Yes, that's me," assented the other. "Stranger here? looking for me?"
+
+"I am," answered Bart. "My name is Stirling. I work at the express
+office at Pleasantville."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've heard of you," said Peter Pope. "The express inspector
+wrote me about you. He said you was a young kid, sort of green in the
+business, who might drop in on me to get some points on the business."
+
+"Quite so," nodded Bart with a side smile, "catching on," as the phrase
+goes, and at once falling in with the way the inspector was working
+matters. "We can't learn too much about the express business, you know,
+and I thought that by comparing notes with you we might dig out
+something of mutual benefit."
+
+"You bet!" responded Pope, perking up quite grandly. "The Vice-President
+of the express company is my cousin. I've got a big pull. Soon as I get
+the ropes learned, I'm going for a manager's job in the city."
+
+"That will be quite fine," said Bart. "I brought some books and blanks
+with me, and, if you can spare the time, I would like to have you see
+how our system strikes you."
+
+"Sure. Come in--no, that is, I'll bring out a chair. I keep only one
+record. I've got this business simplified down to a lead pencil and a
+scratch book, see?"
+
+Bart did "see," and knew that the express inspector had "seen," also. He
+wondered why Pope did not take him into the office. He marveled still
+more as, watching Pope, he noticed he hesitated at the door of the
+express shed. Then Pope moved forward as if actually unwilling to enter
+the place.
+
+Half a minute after he had disappeared within the shed, Pope came
+rushing out, pale and flustered. He tumbled over the chair he was
+bringing to Bart, and a book he carried went flying from under his arm
+into the dirt of the road beyond the platform.
+
+"Why," exclaimed Bart, in some surprise, "what is the matter, Mr. Pope?"
+
+"Matter!" gasped Pope, his eyes rolling, as he backed away from the
+doorway, "say, that place is haunted!"
+
+"What place?"
+
+"The express room. I've been worried for an hour. It's nigh tuckered me
+out."
+
+"What has?" inquired Bart
+
+"Groans, hisses, rustlings. I thought a while back that someone was
+hiding in among the express stuff, and trying to scare me. 'Taint so,
+though. I went among it, and there's no place for anybody to hide."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Bart reassuringly, "you are only nervous, Mr. Pope.
+It's some live freight, likely. Can I take a look?"
+
+"Sure--wish you would. I've been posting up on express business, you
+see, maybe that's the matter. Read about fellows hiding in boxes, and
+jumping out and murdering the messenger. Read about enemies sending a
+man exploding bombs, and blowing him to pieces."
+
+"Nonsense, Mr. Pope!" said Bart, "you don't look as if you had an enemy
+in the world."
+
+"I haven't," declared Peter Pope, "but every business man has his
+rivals, of course. I've heard that those city chaps have an eye on any
+fellow that makes a record like I'm making here. They don't want to see
+him get ahead. They must guess that I'm in line for a big promotion, and
+that might worry them into playing some tragical trick on me."
+
+Bart wanted to laugh outright. He kept a straight face, and solemnly
+started to investigate the trouble. He stepped into the express room and
+took a keen look around, Pope timorously following him.
+
+"There!" panted Pope suddenly, "what did I tell you?"
+
+"That's so," said Bart. "It is sort of mysterious. Someone groaned,
+sure. What have you here, anyway?"
+
+Bart went over to a heap of express matter, come in just that morning.
+There were several small crates, a box or two, and a very large trunk.
+Bart centered his attention on this latter. He stooped down as his quick
+eye observed a row of holes at one end, just under the hauling strap.
+
+"Quiet, for a minute," he whispered warningly to Pope, who, big-eyed and
+trembling, resembled a man on the threshold of some most appalling
+discovery.
+
+Bart's strained hearing shortly caught a rustling sound. It was followed
+by a kind of choking moan. Unmistakably, he decided, both came from the
+trunk.
+
+"Is it locked? No," he said, examining the front of the trunk. Then Bart
+snapped back its two catches. He seized the cover and threw it back.
+
+"Gracious!" gasped Peter Pope.
+
+Bart himself was a trifle startled.
+
+As the trunk cover lifted, a man stepped out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
+
+
+"Air--and water!" panted the mysterious occupant of the trunk.
+
+Bart looked him over in some wonder. He was a short, wiry man, and
+arrayed in a close-fitting costume resembling that of the circus athlete
+on duty.
+
+The man was drenched with perspiration and so nearly exhausted with his
+suffocating imprisonment, that his voice was rasping and hollow.
+
+He was weak, too. As he stepped over the side of the trunk he staggered
+feebly. Then, making out an open window and a pail of drinking water on
+a bench near it, he made a swift dive in that direction.
+
+First the man stuck his head out of the window and drew in great
+draughts of pure, fresh air.
+
+Then he seized the tin cup near the pail. He dipped up the water and
+drank cupful after cupful until Bart eyed him in some alarm.
+
+"Ah--h!" breathed the man in a long aspiration of relief and enjoyment,
+"that's better. Say, ten minutes more and there would have been no
+Professor Rigoletto."
+
+As he spoke he went back to the trunk. He took out a long gossamer rain
+coat that had been used as a pillow. This he proceeded to put on.
+
+It came to his feet. He buttoned it up, drew a jaunty crush cap from one
+of its pockets, and grinned pleasantly into the face of the petrified
+Peter Pope.
+
+"See here!" blurted out the Cardysville express agent, "this
+isn't--isn't regular. It isn't schedule, you know."
+
+"I hope not--sincerely," airily retorted the stranger. "Fifty miles on a
+slow train, three hours waiting in a close trunk. Ah, no. But I've
+arrived. Ha, ha, that's so!"
+
+He glanced into the trunk. Its bottom seemed covered with some coarse
+burlap. Professor Rigoletto threw shut the cover.
+
+"Aha!" he said suddenly, bending his ear as a strain of distant circus
+music floated on the air. "Show on, I'll be late. I'll call later--"
+
+"No, you don't!" interrupted Pope, recovering from his fright, and
+placing his bulky form in the doorway.
+
+"Don't what, my friend?" mildly asked the Professor.
+
+"Deadhead--beat the express company. You're one trunk--and excess
+weight."
+
+"I don't dispute it. What, then?"
+
+"Pay," promptly and definitely announced the agent.
+
+"Can't. Haven't a cent. That's why I had to get a friend to ship me this
+way. But he said he'd wire ahead to my partner with the circus, who
+would call for me here. I'll go and find him, and settle the bill."
+
+"You don't leave here until those charges are paid. You want to be
+rapid, too," declared Pope, "or I'll see if the railroad company don't
+want to collect fare, as well."
+
+"Want to keep me here, eh?" murmured the Professor thoughtfully. "Well,
+I'm agreeable, only you'll have to feed and bed me. If I'm live stock, I
+demand live-stock privileges, see?"
+
+The express agent looked worried.
+
+"What am I to do?" he asked, in a quandary, of Bart.
+
+"Oh," smiled Bart, "I guess you had better trust him to find his friend
+and come back with the money."
+
+"I'll hold the trunk, anyway," observed Pope. "What have you got in it?
+Some old worthless togs, I suppose."
+
+"Mistake--about a thousand dollars in value," coolly retorted the
+Professor.
+
+"Yes, you have! I thought so. Some old burlap."
+
+"Careful, my friend!" spoke the deadhead sharply. "There's nothing there
+that you will care to see."
+
+"Isn't there? I'll investigate, just the same," declared Pope, throwing
+back the trunk cover and delving in the heap of burlap. "Murder! Help!"
+
+Peter Pope uttered a fearful yell. He backed from the trunk suddenly, A
+sinuous, hissing form had risen up before his face.
+
+This was an enormous cobra, and, under the circumstances, very frightful
+to see. The Cardysville express agent made a headlong bolt for the door.
+He slid clear outside across the platform, and landed in the mud of the
+road.
+
+"Prt! prt! Caesar, so--so!" spoke Professor Rigoletto in a peculiar,
+purring tone, approaching the serpent.
+
+He coaxed and forced the big snake back into its warm coverings, and
+shut down the trunk cover and clasped it. Bart, highly edified at the
+unique incident, followed him outside.
+
+"I'm the Cingalese snake-charmer," explained Professor Rigoletto.
+"Sorry, my friend," he observed to the wry-faced Pope, who was busy
+scraping the mud from his clothing, "but I told you so."
+
+"Ugh!" shuddered the agent. "You get that trunk out of here
+double-quick, or I'll have you arrested."
+
+"Sure, I will," answered the Professor with alacrity, "and I promise you
+that I will bring or send you the express charges by the time the show
+is over."
+
+Professor Rigoletto dragged the trunk to the platform. It was not a
+heavy burden, now. Bart good-humoredly assisted him in getting it
+balanced properly on his shoulder. The professor courteously thanked him
+and asked him to come and see the show free, and marched off quite
+contented with the result of his daring deadhead experiment.
+
+The Cardysville express agent was greatly worked up over the incident of
+the hour. It was some time before he could get his mind sufficiently
+calmed down to discuss business affairs coherently.
+
+Bart, however, handled the man in a pleasant, politic manner, and soon
+had results working.
+
+He let Peter Pope imagine that he was the originator of every idea that
+he, Bart himself, suggested. He very deftly introduced the system in
+vogue at the Pleasantville express office.
+
+In fact, at the end of two hours Bart had accomplished all he had been
+sent to do. He had got Pope's records into sensible shape, had opened a
+small set of books for him, and knew that the inspector must be pleased
+with the results.
+
+Bart had missed the early afternoon train. There was no other running to
+Pleasantville direct until eleven o'clock that night.
+
+He had planned to put in the time strolling about town, when Professor
+Rigoletto appeared. He was accompanied by a friend.
+
+The latter ascertained the express charges on the trunk, paid them, and
+handed both Bart and Pope a free ticket to the evening's entertainment.
+
+Bart took a stroll by himself, got his supper at a neat little
+restaurant, and met Pope as agreed at the door of the main show tent at
+seven o'clock.
+
+They were given good seats, and they had the pleasure of seeing
+Professor Rigoletto and his big snake under more agreeable conditions
+than those of their first introduction to them.
+
+The show was a very good one, and at half-past ten they left the tent.
+The Cardysville express agent accompanied Bart to the depot, where the
+east bound train was due to arrive in thirty minutes.
+
+As they walked up and down the platform, a horse and wagon drove up to
+the little express shed. Pope went over to it. Bart accompanied him.
+
+The driver of the wagon was a brisk, smart-looking farmery individual.
+Pope knew him, and nodded to him in a friendly fashion.
+
+"Come after something?" inquired the agent "I don't recall that there is
+anything here for you."
+
+"No, I want to express these hives," answered the farmer.
+
+He indicated six boxes lying in his wagon, covered with gauze.
+
+"Bother!" said Pope, a little crossly. "That's no midnight job. Why
+don't you come in the daytime, Mr. Simms? You just caught me here by
+chance, at this outlandish hour."
+
+"Particular shipment," explained Simms, "and I've got to catch the
+trains just right. You see, these are special imported Italian bees,
+Breeders. I reckon every one of those beauties is worth half-a-dollar.
+They're very delicate in this climate, and call for great care. I want
+you to instruct the messenger to follow the directions carded on the
+boxes."
+
+"I can do that," said Pope. "What he will do, is another thing."
+
+"You see," continued the farmer, "if they handle them carefully at
+Pleasantville, and see that they catch the early express to the city
+from there, someone will be waiting to take them in charge at the
+terminus. I'd be awful glad to tip the messenger handsomely to have
+someone at Pleasantville, where they transfer the hives, open the
+ventilators for a spell and tip down into the pans some of the honey
+syrup."
+
+"I will do that for you, sir," spoke up Bart--"I am in charge of the
+express office at Pleasantville. I am going on this train, and I will be
+glad to see that your goods are attended to just right, and transferred
+on time."
+
+"Say, will you?" exclaimed the farmer in a pleased tone. "Now, that's
+just the ticket! The wrong draught on those bees, or too much bad air,
+or too little feed, and they die off in dozens. You see, at fifty cents
+apiece, that means quite a loss on an unlucky shipment."
+
+"It does, indeed, Mr. Simms," responded Bart "I am very much interested
+in the little workers, and you can rest easy as to their being rightly
+cared for. I believe I will ride to Pleasantville in the express car, so
+your bees will be right under my eye till they are put on the city
+express."
+
+"Thank you, thank you," said the farmer heartily.
+
+As the train whistled in the distance, he came up to Bart and slipped a
+bank note in his hand.
+
+Bart demurred, but it was no use. He found himself two dollars richer
+for his accommodating proposition.
+
+As the train drew up, Peter Pope rapped at the door of the express car.
+A sleepy-eyed messenger opened it. The hives were shoved in. Bart made a
+brief explanation to the messenger, showing his pass. He waved a
+pleasant adieu to Pope and the farmer as the express car door was closed
+and locked.
+
+When Bart got home he was more than tired out. But he had done well and
+in the end got full praise for his work.
+
+A day passed, and Bart failed to find Baker. He hunted everywhere and
+kept up the search until he knew not where to look further.
+
+Bart went home. He had scarcely reached his bedroom when there was a
+vigorous summons at the front door.
+
+"I hope it is Baker," murmured Bart, as he slipped on the coat he had
+just taken off.
+
+"A telegram, Bart," said his mother, at the bottom of the stairs.
+
+She had receipted for it. Bart tore it open wonderingly, glancing first
+at the signature, and marveling at its unusual length. It was signed by
+Robert Leslie, superintendent of the express company, at the city end of
+the line.
+
+This is what it said:
+
+"Special II. 256 by afternoon express, for Martin & Company,
+Pleasantville, contains fifteen thousand dollars in cash, sender Dunn &
+Son, Importers. They ask me to make a special delivery, and will defray
+any extra cost for having it accepted personally by A.B. Martin, and
+receipted for by him in the presence of witnesses. Delivery to be legal,
+must be made before twelve, midnight, and this certified to. This is a
+very important matter for one of the company's largest customers. Be
+sure to make delivery on time."
+
+Bart read the telegram over twice, taking in its important details, with
+a serious face.
+
+"Fifteen thousand dollars!" he repeated. "It has saved me some worry
+that I did not discover the amount before. As to the delivery, that is
+easy. I've got over two hours yet. I see what it is. Martin & Company
+probably want to throw up a contract because prices have gone up, the
+contract must be made binding by payment of fifteen thousand dollars by
+midnight, or Dunn & Son lose. All right."
+
+His mother noticed that some important business was on her son's mind,
+and only told Bart to take care of himself.
+
+Bart hurried towards the express office. At a street crossing he paused,
+to let pass a close carriage that was driven along at a furious rate of
+speed in the direction from which he had just come.
+
+"Hello!" he forcibly ejaculated, as it flashed by him, the corner street
+lamp irradiating its interior brightly--"there's queer company for you!"
+
+The remark was warranted. The occupants of the vehicle were Colonel
+Jeptha Harrington and Lem Wacker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+LATE VISITORS
+
+
+The little express office was dark and lonely-looking when Bart again
+reached it.
+
+Bart unlocked the office door, shot the inside bolt carefully after him,
+lighted the lantern, placed it on the desk, and opened the safe.
+
+As he selected the big brown envelope marked "Martin & Company," and
+bearing the express company's shining green seals, his fingers tingled.
+The immensity of the sum intrusted to his charge perturbed him a trifle.
+
+Bart relocked the safe, stowed the envelope in an inner pocket, and
+opened the drawer of a little stand leaning against the safe.
+
+He took out a revolver. Mr. Leslie himself had advised him to always
+have one handy in the express office. Bart had never touched the weapon
+before. It had been loaned him by Mr. Haven, and Darry had brought it
+to the office. Bart slipped it now into a side pocket.
+
+He noticed in detail the entry on the messenger's slip. The prepaid
+charges on the Martin & Company consignment were seven dollars and
+seventy-five cents, or five cents for every hundred dollars or fraction
+of it over the first fifty dollars, which was charged for at regular
+tariff rates, twenty-five cents.
+
+"It is fifteen thousand dollars, right enough!" mused Bart. "Now, to
+make sure of the form of receipt."
+
+He filled out a special receipt that acknowledged besides the usual
+delivery, a verification of the amount of the inclosure, its acceptance
+as correct, and left a blank for the names of two witnesses.
+
+Bart was now ready to sally forth on his peculiar errand, and had fully
+decided in his mind the persons he would get to act as his witnesses.
+
+"What is that!" he questioned, suddenly and sharply.
+
+He could hear a springy vehicle bound over the near tracks, and then its
+wheels cut the loose cindered road leading up to the express office.
+
+It halted. He could catch the quick, labored breathing of two horses, a
+carriage door creaked! some low voices made a brief hum of
+conversation, and the vehicle seemed to depart.
+
+Bart stood stock-still, wondering and guessing. Footsteps sounded on the
+platform. There came a thundering thump as of a heavy cane on the office
+door.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded Bart.
+
+"Colonel Harrington. I've got to see you."
+
+"Come in," Bart said, unbolting the door.
+
+Colonel Harrington was red of face and fussy of manner. He threw the
+door shut with his foot, and sank to a bench, breathing heavily.
+
+"Was there something you wanted to say to me, Colonel Harrington?"
+inquired Bart.
+
+"Yes there was!" snapped out the rich man of Pleasantville. "Anxious to
+see you! Just drove up to your house. They told me you were here. I once
+offered you a hundred dollars."
+
+Bart nodded, with a faint smile.
+
+"It wasn't enough," stumbled on the colonel. "I am now going to make it
+a thousand."
+
+"Why, what for, Colonel Harrington?" demanded Bart in surprise.
+
+"Because you can earn it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Shall I be blunt and plain?"
+
+"It is always the best way."
+
+"Very well, then," resumed the colonel desperately. "A certain
+unclaimed express package was sold here to-day, marked A.A. Adams.
+You've got it."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Oh, you know it and I want it. Hand it over, and here"--the colonel
+made a dive for his pocketbook--"here's your thousand dollars."
+
+Bart made a signal of remonstrance with his hand, his face grave and
+decided.
+
+"Stop right there, Colonel Harrington," he said forcibly. "Are you aware
+that you are offering a bribe to a bonded representative of the express
+company?"
+
+"Rot take your express company!" growled the colonel angrily. "I am one
+of its stock-holders. I could buy the whole concern out, if I wanted
+to!"
+
+"Until you do, I obey official instructions," announced Bart. "Please do
+not degrade yourself and embarrass me, Colonel Harrington, by saying
+anything further on this score. I will not sell my honor, nor swerve a
+hair's breadth from a line of duty plain and clear. The package you
+refer to was legally purchased by the highest bidder, I hold it
+temporarily in trust for him. It is as safe and sacred with me as if it
+was the property of the First National Bank of Pleasantville."
+
+Colonel Harrington squirmed, got red and pale by turns, gripped his cane
+fiercely, and then, relaxed with a groan.
+
+"It's my property!" he declared. "I can prove it's my property."
+
+"Then I suggest that you persuade the person who bought it of that
+fact," said Bart.
+
+"Say!" shot out the colonel eagerly, his eye brightening, "if I bring an
+order from that same person, will you give up the package?"
+
+Bart hesitated.
+
+"You know where he is, then?" he inquired suspiciously.
+
+"I--I might find him," stammered the military man.
+
+"I do not think I would," said Bart. "Bring him here personally, and I
+will hand it over to him--in your presence, if he says so."
+
+The colonel groaned again. It was plainly to be seen that he was in an
+intense inward frenzy.
+
+"Stirling, you've got to give me that package!" he cried, springing to
+his feet and lifting his cane threateningly.
+
+"Have I?" said Bart, facing him watchingly.
+
+"Be careful, Colonel Harrington! you are pretty near committing a
+criminal offense."
+
+"You're in the plot--you know all about it! Give up that package,
+or--or--"
+
+"Colonel Harrington," said Bart calmly, but every word ringing out as
+clear as the tone of a bell, "I am no ruffian, and I hate violence, but
+if you lift that cane to me again--I'll shoot."
+
+Bart showed the gleaming top of the weapon in his pocket, backing to the
+door.
+
+Just then the door behind him was forcibly thrust open, its edge hitting
+him violently. Then someone pounced upon him.
+
+The attack was sudden and effective. A piece of rope was looped deftly
+about Bart's arms, holding him helpless, secured behind, and as he was
+pushed roughly against the desk. Lem Wacker's evil face leered down upon
+him.
+
+"Don't you holler!" ordered Lem.
+
+As he spoke, he leaned over the railing. The waste box held a mass of
+cotton that had packed some of the parcels disposed of at the sale that
+afternoon. Lem grabbed up a handful, and forcibly stuffed it into Bart's
+mouth.
+
+"Wacker! Wacker!" gasped Colonel Harrington in affright, "don't--don't
+hurt him. This is dreadful--"
+
+"Shut up!" ordered Lem Wacker recklessly, "you want something and don't
+know how to get it. I do--and will."
+
+He snatched at Bart's tightly-buttoned coat and tore it loose, groped
+inside and drew out a package.
+
+"I've got it," he announced. "No!--he ripped off the end of the
+parcel--here's a haul."
+
+Bart writhed, choked on the loose strangling filaments of cotton, but
+could not utter a word.
+
+"Give me that package!" cried the colonel. "Stop! where are you going?"
+
+Lem Wacker had bolted. The colonel stared in marveling astonishment as
+his cohort sprang through the open doorway. Bart had managed to wad the
+cotton in his mouth into a compact wet mass, enabling him to speak.
+
+"Colonel Harrington!" he cried, "that man has not got the package you
+were after. He has instead stolen a money envelope for Martin & Company
+containing fifteen thousand dollars in currency, and is making off with
+it. Cut this rope instantly that I may pursue him, or I give you my word
+that, as a partner in his crime, rich as you are, and influential as you
+are, you shall go to the State penitentiary."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE
+
+
+It was an exciting moment. Bart was intently worked up, but he kept his
+head level. Everything hung on the action of the next two minutes.
+
+Whatever price the rich Colonel Harrington was paying Lem Wacker for his
+cooeperation, it was not enough to blind that individual to a realization
+of the fact that accident had placed in Wacker's grasp the great haul of
+his life, and he was making off with this fortune, leaving the colonel
+in the lurch.
+
+The latter stood shaking like an aspen, his face the color of chalk.
+Apparently he took in and believed every word that Bart had spoken.
+
+"I'm in a fix--a terrible fix!" he groaned. "This is
+dreadful--dreadful!"
+
+"Mend it, then!" cried Bart. "Quick! if you have one spark of sense or
+manhood in you. There's a knife--cut this rope."
+
+With quivering fingers Colonel Harrington took up from the desk the
+office knife used for cutting string. It was keen-bladed as a razor.
+Unsteady and bungling as was his stroke, he severed the rope partly, and
+Bart burst his bonds free.
+
+"Stay here," called out the young express agent sharply. "I hold you
+responsible for this office till I return!"
+
+He dashed outside like a rocket, scanned the whole roadway expanse, and
+darted for the freight yards with the speed of the wind.
+
+The electric arc lights were sparsely scattered, but there was
+sufficient illumination for him to make out a fugitive figure just
+crossing the broad roadway towards the freight tracks.
+
+It was Lem Wacker. A train of empty box freights blocked his way. He
+stooped, made a diving scurry under one of them, and was lost to view.
+
+Bart ran as he had never run before. The train cleared the tracks as he
+reached the spot where Wacker had disappeared.
+
+At that moment above the jangling, clumping activity of the yards there
+arose on the night air one frightful, piercing shriek.
+
+Bart halted with a nameless shock, for the utterance was distinctly
+human and curdling. He glanced after the receding train, fancying that
+Wacker might have got caught under the cars and was being dragged along
+with them.
+
+That roadbed was clear, however. Two hundred feet to the right was a
+second train. Its forward section was moving off, having just thrown
+some cars against others stationary on a siding.
+
+Bart ran towards these. Wacker could not have so suddenly disappeared in
+any other direction. He crossed between bumpers, and glanced eagerly all
+around. There was no hiding-place nearer than the repair shops, and they
+were five hundred feet distant.
+
+Wacker could not possibly have reached their precincts in the limited
+space of time afforded since Bart had last lost sight of him.
+
+"He is hiding in some of those cars," decided Bart, "or he has swung
+onto the bumpers of the section pulling out--hark!"
+
+Bart pricked up his ears. A strange sound floated on the air--a low,
+even, musical tinkle.
+
+Its source could not be far distant. Bart ran along the side of the
+stationary freights.
+
+"It is Wacker, sure," he breathed, "for that is the same sound made by
+the little alarm clock he bought at the sale this afternoon."
+
+The last vibrating tintinnabulations of the clock died away as Bart
+discovered his enemy.
+
+Lem Wacker's burly figure and white face were discernible against the
+direct flare of an arc light. He seemed a part of the bumpers of two
+cars. Bart flared a match once, and uttered the single word:
+
+"Caught."
+
+Lem Wacker was clinging to the upright brake rod, and swaying there. His
+face was bloodless and he was writhing with pain. One foot was clamped
+tight, a crushed, jellied mass between two bumpers.
+
+It seemed that his foot must have slipped just as the forward freights
+were switched down. This had caused that frenzied yell. Perhaps the
+thought of the money had impelled him not to repeat it, but the little
+alarm clock which he carried in his pocket had betrayed him.
+
+Bart took in the situation at a glance. He was shocked and unnerved, but
+he stepped close to the writhing culprit.
+
+"Lem Wacker," he said, "where is that money envelope?"
+
+"In my pocket," groaned Wacker. "I've got it this time--crippled for
+life!"
+
+The young express agent did not have to search for the stolen money
+package. It protruded from Wacker's side pocket. As he glanced it over,
+he saw that it was practically intact. Wacker had torn open only one
+corner, sufficient to observe its contents. Bart placed the envelope in
+his own pocket.
+
+"I'm fainting!" declared Wacker.
+
+Bart crossed under the bumpers to the other side of the freights. He
+swept the scene with a searching glance, finally detected the shifting
+glow of a night watchman's lantern, and ran over to its source.
+
+He knew the watchman, and asked the man to accompany him, explaining as
+they went along that Lem Wacker had got caught between two freights, was
+held a prisoner in the bumpers with his foot crushed, and pointed the
+sufferer out as they neared the freights.
+
+Wacker by this time had sunk flat on the bumpers, his limbs twisted up
+under him, but he managed to hold on to the brake rod. He only moaned
+and writhed when the horrified watchman spoke to him.
+
+"I'll have to get help," said the latter. "They will have to switch off
+the front freights to get him loose."
+
+The watchman took out his whistle and blew a kind of a call on the
+telegraphic system. Two minutes later Bart saw McCarthy hurriedly
+rounding a corner of the freight depot, and advanced towards him.
+
+The young express agent briefly and confidentially imparted to his old
+friend the fact that Lem Wacker had tried to steal some money from the
+express office, and had got his deserts at last.
+
+"Get him clear of the bumpers," said Bart, "carry him to the express
+office, call for a surgeon, and don't let him be taken away from there
+till I show up."
+
+"What's moving, Stirling?" inquired McCarthy.
+
+"Something very important. Wacker seems to be punished enough already,
+and I do not know that I want him placed under arrest, but he knows
+something he must tell me before he gets out of my reach."
+
+"Then you had better wait."
+
+"I can't do that," said Bart. "I have a special to deliver, on personal
+orders from Mr. Leslie, the express superintendent."
+
+Bart consulted his watch. It was five minutes of eleven.
+
+"Only a little over an hour," he reflected. "I want to hustle!"
+
+He saw to it that the recovered package was safely stowed in an inner
+pocket, and started by the shortest cut he knew from the yards.
+
+Bart did not even pause at the express office, where he had left Colonel
+Harrington. He ran all the way half across the silent, sleeping town,
+and never halted until he reached the Haven homestead.
+
+He did not go to the front door, but, well acquainted with the
+disposition of the household, paused under a rear window, picked up a
+handful of gravel, threw it against the upper panes, and gave three low
+but distinct whistling trills.
+
+He could hear a prompt rustling. In less than forty seconds Darry Haven
+stuck his head out of the window.
+
+"Hello!" he hailed, rubbing his eyes.
+
+"Come down, quick," directed Bart. "Bring Bob, too."
+
+"What's the lark, Bart?"
+
+"No lark at all," answered Bart--"strictly business. Don't take a
+minute. No need disturbing the folks. You can be back inside of an
+hour."
+
+Bob, hatless and without a collar, came sliding down the lightning rod
+two minutes later. Darry landed on the ground almost simultaneously,
+simply letting himself drop from the window sill.
+
+"Two dollars apiece for half an hour's work," said Bart, and then told
+his companions the details of the special mission in which he required
+their services.
+
+"Ginger! but you're nerve and action," commented the admiring Bob.
+
+"And good to your friends," put in Darry.
+
+They passed the pickle factory. It stood on the edge of the town, and
+the residence of the senior partner of Martin & Company, whose name had
+been mentioned in the telegram, was nearly half a mile further away.
+
+"Eleven thirty-five," announced Bart, a trifle anxiously. "It does not
+give us much time. I hope there's no slip anywhere."
+
+At just fifteen minutes of midnight the strange trio passed up the
+graveled walk leading to the Martin mansion. The front door had a
+ponderous old-fashioned knocker, and Bart plied it without ceremony.
+
+He began to grow nervous as three minutes passed by, and not the least
+attention was paid to his summons.
+
+Suddenly an upper window was thrust up, and a man's head came into view.
+
+"Who's there?" demanded a gruff, impatient voice.
+
+"Is this Mr. Martin, Mr. A.B. Martin?" inquired Bart.
+
+"Yes, it is--what do you want?"
+
+"I have an express package for you," explained Bart.
+
+"Oh, you have?" snapped Mr. Martin. "What the mischief do you mean
+waking a man up at midnight on a thing like that! Deliver it at the
+factory in the morning."
+
+The speaker, muttering direfully under his breath, was about to slam
+down the window.
+
+"Wait one moment, Mr. Martin," called up Bart sharply. "This is a
+special delivery, and a very important matter. I tender you this package
+in the presence of these witnesses, and it is a legal delivery. If you
+decline to come down and take it, and I leave it on your doorstep at the
+call of the first tramp who happens to come along, I have done my duty,
+and the loss is yours--a matter of fifteen thousand dollars."
+
+"What! what!" shouted Martin.
+
+"That is the amount."
+
+"From--Dunn & Son?"
+
+"I guess that's right," said Bart. "Will you come down and take it?"
+
+Martin did not reply. He disappeared from the window, but left it open.
+Bart heard him muttering to himself.
+
+"Supposing he doesn't come down?" questioned Bob, in a whisper.
+
+"I think he will," said Bart. "Eleven forty-eight. Mr. Martin," he
+called out loudly, "I can't wait here all night."
+
+"Shut up!" retorted an angry voice--"I'm hurrying all I can."
+
+"He isn't!" spoke Darry, in a low tone to Bart. "He's on to the
+business, and playing for time."
+
+"And he's beat us!" breathed Bob--"hear there! twelve o'clock. Your
+delivery is no good, Bart! It's just struck a new day!"
+
+"S--sh!" warned Bart, as a clock inside the house rang out twelve
+silvery strokes. "The clock is wrong. We've got five minutes and a half
+yet."
+
+In about two minutes a light flashed in the hall, the front door was
+unlocked, and Martin appeared, half-dressed. Bart relievedly put up his
+watch. It was just three minutes of twelve.
+
+He instantly placed the express envelope in Martin's hands, slipping
+into the vestibule.
+
+"Mr. Martin," he said, "it is necessary for you to verify the contents
+of this package. An accident happened to it, as you see."
+
+Martin tore the envelope clear open, and glanced over fifteen bills of
+one thousand dollar denomination each.
+
+"All right," he said gruffly.
+
+"Will you sign this receipt?" asked Bart politely, tendering the slip of
+paper he had prepared at the office for this especial occasion. "Thank
+you," he added, as the pickle man scrawled a penciled signature at the
+bottom of the paper.
+
+"I take this money," said Mr. Martin, looking up with a peculiar
+expression on his face, "because it is delivered by you, but I shall
+return it to Dunn & Son to-morrow."
+
+"That is your business, Mr. Martin," said Bart politely.
+
+"It is, and--something more! I call on you and your witnesses to notice
+that the fifteen thousand dollars was not delivered to me until six
+minutes after twelve, too late to make the tender legal, which makes the
+contract null and void."
+
+Mr. Martin, with a triumphant sweep of his hand, pointed to a big clock
+at the end of the long hall.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Bart, holding up his watch, "but I keep
+official time, and it is exactly thirty seconds to midnight. Listen!"
+
+And thirty seconds later, from the Pleasantville court house tower, the
+town bell rang out twelve musical strokes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BROUGHT TO TIME
+
+
+"I'll go!" said Colonel Jeptha Harrington, magnate of Pleasantville.
+
+"All right," said Bart Stirling, express company agent.
+
+It was three o'clock in the morning, and the scene was the little
+express office where so many unusual and exciting happenings had
+transpired within twenty-four hours.
+
+The colonel's announcement was given in the tone of a man facing a hard
+proposition and forced to accept it--or something worse.
+
+Bart's reply was calm and off-handed. During a two hours' siege with the
+military man he had never lost his temper or his wits, and had come off
+the victor.
+
+When Bart had concluded his very creditable piece of business with Mr.
+Martin of the pickle factory, he had sent Darry and Bob Haven back to
+bed, and had forthwith returned to the express office.
+
+Colonel Harrington, scared-looking and sullen, was still there. He
+seemed to have met his match in the young express agent, and dared not
+defy him.
+
+Bart found McCarthy, the night watchman, on guard outside, who told him
+that they had got Lem Wacker clear of the bumpers, had carried him into
+the express office, made up a rude litter, and had sent for a surgeon.
+
+The latter had just concluded his labors as Bart entered. Lem Wacker lay
+with his foot bandaged up, conscious, and in no intense pain, for the
+surgeon had given him some deadening medicine.
+
+"He belongs at the hospital," the surgeon advised Bart. "That foot will
+have to come off."
+
+"As bad as that!" murmured Bart.
+
+"Yes. I will telephone for the ambulance when I leave here."
+
+"Very well," acquiesced Bart. "Can I speak with the patient?"
+
+"If he will speak with you. He's an ugly, ungrateful mortal!"
+
+Bart went over to the side of the prostrate man.
+
+"Mr. Wacker," he said, "I do not wish to trouble you in your present
+condition, but something has got to be understood before you leave this
+place. You go to the hospital as a prisoner or as a patient, just as you
+elect."
+
+"Pile it on! pile it on!" growled Wacker. "You've got the upper hand,
+and you'll squeeze me, I suppose. All the same, those who stand back of
+me will take care of me or I'll explode a bomb that will shatter
+Pleasantville to pieces!"
+
+Colonel Harrington shuddered at this palpable allusion to himself.
+
+"And I'm going to sue the railroad company for my smashed foot. What do
+you want?"
+
+"This, Mr. Wacker," pursued Bart quietly, "you have to-night committed a
+crime that means State's prison for ten years if I make the complaint."
+
+"I'll have a partner in it, all the same!" remarked Wacker grimly.
+
+The colonel groaned.
+
+"You were after a package that belongs to a friend of mine," continued
+Bart. "I want to know why, and I want to know what you have done with
+that person."
+
+"Don't you torture me!" cried Wacker irritably--"don't you let him," he
+blared out to the quacking magnate. "I won't say a word. Let Harrington
+do as he pleases. He's the king bee! Only, just this, Harrington, you
+take care of me or I'll blow the whole business."
+
+"Yes, yes," stammered the colonel in a mean, servile way, approaching
+the litter, "leave it all to me, Wacker. Don't raise a row, Stirling,"
+he pleaded piteously, "don't have him arrested, I'll foot the bill, I'll
+square everything. This matter must be hushed--yes, yes, hushed up!"
+hoarsely groaned the military man. "Oh, its dreadful, dreadful!"
+
+Bart felt that he had matters in strong control, spoke a word to
+McCarthy and, when the ambulance came, allowed them to take Lem Wacker
+to the hospital.
+
+Then he and Colonel Harrington were alone. The latter was in a pitiable
+condition of fear and humiliation.
+
+"See here, Stirling," he said finally, "I'll confess the truth. I've
+done wrong. There's a paper in that package that would mean disgrace for
+me if it was made public. I'll own to that, but it's over a dead and
+buried business, and it can do no good to make it public property now. I
+warn you if it is, I will shoot myself through the head."
+
+Bart doubted if the colonel had the courage to carry out his threat, but
+he temporized with the great man, got him to make enough admissions to
+somewhat clear the situation, and the long discussion ended with the
+announcement by Colonel Harrington that he "would go."
+
+In other words, he confessed that Baker, Bart's friend and the highest
+bidder for the mysterious express package, was a prisoner in his barn.
+
+In some way Lem Wacker had become aware of Baker's secret, whatever that
+was, and had helped the colonel in his efforts to suppress Baker and
+secure possession of the package.
+
+Bart was shocked at this exhibition of cold-blooded villainy on the part
+of a representative member of the community, although he had never had
+much use for the pompous, domineering old tyrant, who now led the way
+through the silent Streets of Pleasantville as meek as a lamb.
+
+He took Bart through the beautiful grounds of his sumptuous home, and to
+a windowless padlocked room in the loft of the stable.
+
+Poor Baker, his hands secured with stout pieces of wire, arose from a
+stool with a gleam of hope on his pallid face as Bart followed the
+colonel into the room.
+
+"See here, Baker--which isn't your name--but it will do--" said the
+colonel at once, "things have turned your way. Your friend here, young
+Stirling, has got the whip-hand--I am cornered, and admit it. I want to
+make a proposition to you, Stirling needn't hear it. When you have
+decided, we will call him into the room again and he will see that you
+get your rights. Is that satisfactory?"
+
+"What shall I do?" asked Baker of Bart.
+
+"Hear what Colonel Harrington has to say. If it suits you, settle up
+this matter as you think right. I am here to see that he does as he
+promises."
+
+Bart stepped out of the room. There was a continuous hum of conversation
+for nearly half an hour. Then the colonel opened the door.
+
+"I'm to go into the house to write out something Baker wants," he
+explained. "Then I'll come back."
+
+"Very well," nodded Bart.
+
+He tried to engage Baker in conversation, but the latter, his hands free
+now, paced the room nervously, acting like some caged animal.
+
+"I'm afraid of him!" he declared. "I don't know that I am doing what is
+best. He's a bad man. He begs me to spare him for the sake of his
+family."
+
+"Is this a matter where settlement will do any injustice to others?"
+asked Bart.
+
+"None, now--it is past that."
+
+"Then follow the dictates of your own judgment, Mr. Baker," directed
+Bart, "being sure that you are acting with a clear conscience."
+
+Colonel Harrington, when he returned, brought two documents. Baker
+looked them over.
+
+"Are they satisfactory?" inquired the colonel anxiously.
+
+"Yes," answered Baker.
+
+"Now understand, there is to be no gossip about this affair?" insisted
+the magnate.
+
+"I shan't talk," said Baker.
+
+"And I am to have that express package?"
+
+"Give it to him, Stirling."
+
+Bart took the mysterious unclaimed package from his pocket. Colonel
+Harrington seized it with a satisfied cry.
+
+"You have wronged myself and others deeply, Colonel Harrington," said
+Baker in a grave, reproachful tone, "but you have made some amends. I
+forgive you, and I hope you will be a better man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"STILL HIGHER!"
+
+
+Bart Stirling was a proud and happy boy as he stood at the door of the
+express office looking down the tracks of the B. & M.
+
+A new spur was being constructed, and it divided to semi-inclose a
+substantial foundation which was the start of the new and commodious
+express office. The blue sky, smiling down on the busy scene, was no
+more serene than the prospect which the future seemed to offer for the
+successful young express agent.
+
+With his last reckless crime Lem Wacker had ceased to be a disturbing
+element at Pleasantville. After two months' confinement he had limped
+out of the hospital, out of town, and out of Bart Stirling's life.
+
+Colonel Jeptha Harrington himself had left town with the beginning of
+winter. It was said he intended to make an extended trip in Europe.
+
+With his departure, a new Mr. Baker seemed to spring into existence.
+Divested of his disguise, no longer a fear-filled roustabout fugitive,
+Bart's strange friend had found a steady, lucrative position at the
+hotel, and Bart felt that he had certainly been the means of doing some
+real good in the world every time he looked at the happy, contented face
+of his protege.
+
+Concerning all the details of Baker's past, Bart never knew the entire
+truth.
+
+Baker felt, however, that it was due to his champion that he explain in
+the main the mystery of his connection with Colonel Harrington, and he
+told a strange story.
+
+It seemed that the purse-proud colonel had a poor brother living in
+another State.
+
+This brother owned a farm on which there lived with him a man named
+Adams, a widower, and his little daughter, Dorothy.
+
+Adams was a close friend of Samuel Harrington, and out of his earnings
+saved the place from being taken on a mortgage.
+
+Samuel Harrington always told Adams that he had made a will, and that in
+case of his sudden death the farm would go to him. He gave Adams a
+letter certifying to his having a claim of over three thousand dollars
+against the property, which he told Adams to show to his rich brother
+when he died, asserting that, although Colonel Harrington had shamefully
+neglected him, he would never dishonorably repudiate a claim of that
+kind.
+
+When Samuel Harrington died, his brother appeared, took possession of
+the farm as only heir, and cruelly drove Mr. Adams and his child from
+the place.
+
+He tore up the written statement Adams gave him, ridiculed his claims,
+and, no will being found, sold the place for a song and left Adams an
+invalid pauper.
+
+Adams had done Baker, or, as his real name was, Albert Baker Mills, a
+great service once.
+
+Baker, or Mills, supported Adams and his child for a year. Adams spent
+all his time bemoaning his fate, and haunted the old farm in a search of
+the will of Samuel Harrington.
+
+One day he did not appear, nor the following. Early on the morning of
+the third day he staggered into the house, weak and fainting. He was
+taken down with a fever, was delirious for a week, and at the end of
+that time died.
+
+Just before his death he tried to tell something about the will. Baker
+made out that he had found it, that it was at Pleasantville, nothing
+more.
+
+After his friend's death, Baker wrote a letter to Colonel Harrington.
+He accused him of his dishonorable conduct, and threatened to publicly
+expose him if he did not provide in some way for the little orphan,
+Dorothy, for whom he had found a home with a poor relative.
+
+A week later Colonel Harrington sought out Baker, told him he had
+trumped up a charge against him that would land him in jail, which Baker
+later discovered was the truth, and gave him twenty-four hours to leave
+the country.
+
+From that time the poor fellow was a fugitive, venturing to appear only
+in disguise at Pleasantville. Adams, it seemed, had found the will and
+had sent it to Pleasantville addressed to himself, not daring to face
+the colonel with the important document in his possession, but never
+living to carry out his plan.
+
+In the settlement with Colonel Harrington, Baker had received a letter
+exculpating him totally from the trumped up charge, and a check for five
+thousand dollars, which money was now held in trust by a bank to provide
+for little Dorothy's future.
+
+Bart felt much gratified over the way all these tangled strands in the
+warp and woof of his young life had been straightened out, but he
+experienced a final blessing that filled him with unutterable joy and
+gratefulness.
+
+A week previous his father had returned from a month's treatment by a
+city expert oculist.
+
+Robert Stirling came back to Pleasantville a well man.
+
+That was a joyful night at the little Stirling home, when Mr. Stirling
+once again looked with restored sight upon the faces of the many friends
+who respected and loved him.
+
+Mr. Stirling, while in the city, had been an invited guest at the home
+of Mr. Leslie, and the express superintendent had learned a good deal
+more about his devoted son than he had ever known before.
+
+"Come out of it!" hailed a jolly voice, and Bart was disturbed in his
+pleasant reverie by the appearance of Darry and Bob Haven.
+
+"It's settled!" cried the latter ecstatically?--"we're going into the
+regular business at last."
+
+"I don't quite catch on," returned Bart.
+
+"The printing and publishing business," put in Darry. "We have got the
+money together for a nice little plant, and father and mother are
+willing that we shall go ahead. Some day you'll see us running a regular
+newspaper."
+
+"Well, I wish you good luck--you certainly deserve it," answered the
+young express agent, warmly.
+
+"There is only one drawback," resumed Bob. "We'll have to give up
+helping you."
+
+"Don't let that bother you. I'll find somebody else. Say, it will be
+fine to start a regular newspaper," went on Bart. "I guess you'd wake
+some of the old-timers up--they are so moss-eaten. This town needs a
+bright, up-to-date sheet."
+
+"We are going to push the printing and publishing business all we can,"
+answered Darry, earnestly. How he and his brother carried out their
+project I shall relate in another story, to be called, "Working Hard to
+Win." It was no light undertaking, but the boys entered into it with a
+vigor that was bound to command success.
+
+"You see, father can help us a good deal," said Bob. "He used to be an
+editor, you know. And more than that, mother can make us whatever
+pictures we may need."
+
+"Oh, you'll be right in it, I know," laughed Bart. "When you start your
+newspaper put me down as the first subscriber. Your subscription money
+is ready whenever you want it."
+
+At that moment a messenger appeared.
+
+"Letter for you," said he to the young express agent, and hurried about
+his business.
+
+"From the express people," murmured Bart, tearing open the letter.
+
+As he perused it, such a quick, bright glow flashed into his face and
+eyes, that the watchful Darry at once surmised that Bart had received a
+communication out of the ordinary.
+
+"Good news, Bart?" he inquired.
+
+"Read it," said Bart simply, and quick-witted Darry saw that he was
+almost too overcome to speak further.
+
+The letter was from Mr. Leslie the superintendent, and contained two
+paragraphs.
+
+The first stated that from the fifteenth of the coming month Mr. Robert
+Stirling would resume his position as express agent at Pleasantville,
+thenceforward made a "Class B" station, at a salary of seventy dollars a
+month.
+
+The second paragraph requested Mr. Bart Stirling to report at
+headquarters for assignment to duty at a city office as assistant
+manager.
+
+Darry Haven reached out and caught the hand of his loyal friend in a
+warm, glad clasp.
+
+"Capital!" he cried enthusiastically--"in line with your motto, Bart
+Stirling--higher still!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Bart Stirling's Road to Success, by Allen Chapman
+
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