fell back and men rolled their quids and looked eagerly up the track.  It came on with screaming whistle and noisy brakes and roaring wheels.  Children began to cry with fear and men to yell with excitement.  Dogs were barking wildly, and two horses ran away, dragging with them part of a picket-fence.  A brown shoat came bounding over the ties and broke through the wall of people, carrying many off their feet and creating panic and profanity.  The train stopped, its engine hissing.  A brakeman of flashy attire, with fine leather showing to the knees, strolled off and up the platform on high heels, haughty as a prince.  Confusion began to abate.

“Hear it pant,” said one, looking at the engine.

“Seems so it had the heaves,” another remarked thoughtfully.

“Goes like the wind,” said a passenger, who had just alighted.  “Jerked us ten mile in less ’n twenty minutes.”

“Folks ‘ll have to be made o’ cast iron to ride on them air cars,” said another.  “I’d ruther set on the tail of a threshin’-machine.  It gave a slew on the turn up yender, an’ I thought ‘twas goin’ right over Bowman’s barn.  It flung me up ag’in the side o’ the car, an’ I see stars fer a minute.  ‘What’s happened,’ says I to another chap.  ‘Oh, we’re all right,’ says he.  ‘Be we?’ says I, an’ then I see I’d lost a tooth an’ broke my glasses.  ’That ain’t nuthin’,’ says he, ’I had my foot braced over ag’in that other seat, an’ somebody fell back on my leg, an’ I guess the knee is out o’ j’int.  But I’m alive, an’ I ain’t got no fault to find.  If I ever git off this shebang, I’m goin’ out in the woods somewhere an’ set down an’ see what kind o’ shape I’m in.  I guess I’m purty nigh sp’ilt, an’ it cost me fifty cents t’ do it.’

“‘An’ all yer common sense, tew,’ says I.”

A number got aboard, and the train started.  Rip Enslow was on the rear platform, his faithful hound galloping gayly behind the train.  Some one had tied him to the brake rod.  Nearly a score of dogs followed, barking merrily.  Rip’s hound came back soon, his tongue low, his tail between his legs.  A number called to him, but he seemed to know his own mind perfectly, and made for the stream and lay down in the middle of it, lapping the shallow water, and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon.

A crowd of hunters watched him.

“Looks so he’d been ketched by a bear,” said one.

In half an hour Rip returned also, a shoulder out of joint, a lump on his forehead, a big rent in his trousers.  He was one, of those men of whom others gather wisdom, for, after that, everybody in the land of the hills knew better than to jump off the cars or tie his hound to the rear platform.

And dogs came to know, after a little while, that the roaring dragon was really afraid of them and would run like a very coward if it saw a dog coming across the fields.  Every small cur that lived in sight of it lay in the tall grass, and when he saw the dragon coming, chased him off the farm of his master.