“It isn’t likely I should.”

“Then you admit that you have no right here?”

Croly was silent.  It was plain enough to Larry what the matter was with the young man.  The truth was he had at some time been temporarily in charge of a small portable or “donkey” engine, such as are used for hoisting purposes in stone quarries and in other out-of-door work, and he was incapable of recognizing the difference between the simple construction of such a machine and the complicated work in the great motive-power of the Tioga Iron Works.

Larry was a slow-spoken boy, and correspondingly slow in making a decision.  But when his mind was really made up, he was equally slow to change it.

He looked at the clock, and then at his own watch.  In one minute the next whistle would blow, and then the engine must be started.

The door leading to the boiler-room had been left open by Croly, and it had glass panels, through which Joe Cuttle could be seen hard at work, feeding the hungry furnaces.

Larry dared not wait another moment.  He stepped quickly to the door and called out: 

“Joe, come here a moment!”

“Yes, my lad.”

The furnace door closed with a clang.  The fireman paused to pull at an iron rod that was suspended against the wall, and the short, quick roar of the five-minute whistle sounded.

Larry had wheeled about the instant he saw Joe start in obedience to his call, and he was in time to see Croly again in the act of seizing the valve-gear.

Without an instant’s hesitation, he took hold of the wheel, and held it firmly, at the same time calling: 

“Quick, Joe!”

The big fireman appeared, and his single eye looked from the face of the boy to that of Croly.

“Did’st thee want me, lad?” he asked, in his gruff tones.

“I want you to take this fellow away from the engine before we’re all blown out of the building to pay for his carelessness,” Larry answered.

Cuttle’s one eye glared upon Steve Croly, and the latter retreated, with a look of grim defiance.

“He’s away from the engine, lad,” said Joe; “and, noo, what else would’st have me do wi’ him?  A’ll frowd him oot, if thou’d give the wud.”

“If he will go out without help, all right; if not, you may boost him a little, if you wish to, Joe,” said Larry, who had resolved to get rid of the dangerous loiterer, this time for good, if possible.

“Git owd wi’ thee!” ordered the big fireman, making a sudden and furious feint of seizing the intruder.

This was more than Steve Croly had bargained for.  It was very well to come in and attempt to defy a boy, of whom he was envious, but quite another thing to face the powerful fireman, whose bare, brown arms and single gleaming eye lent him a most formidable aspect.

And so, without waiting to see how Larry went to work to set the great engine in motion, Steve hurried down the steps and across the boiler-room, not even looking back while he heard the fireman’s heavy boots clumping along the stone floor.