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!”