* * * * *

Of course Kelly, being Irish, should have been a Democrat; but he was not.  He was not boisterously or offensively Republican, but he was going to vote the prosperity ticket.  He had tried it four years ago, and business had never been better on the Pere Marquette.  Moreover, he had a new hand-car.

The management had issued orders to the effect that there must be no coercion of employees.  It was pretty well understood among the men that the higher officials would vote the Republican ticket and leave the little fellows free to do the same.  So Kelly, being boss of the gang, could not, with “ju” respect to the order of the Superintendent, enter into the argument going on constantly between Burke and Shea on one side and Lucien Boseaux, the French-Canadian-Anglo-Saxon-Foreign-American Citizen, on the other.  This argument always reached its height at noon-time, and had never been more heated than now, it being the day before election.  “Here is prosper tee,” laughed Lucien, holding up a half-pint bottle of vin rouge.

“Yes,” Burke retorted, “an’ ye have four pound of cotton waste in the bottom o’ that bucket to trow the grub t’ the top.  Begad, I’d vote for O’Bryan wid an empty pail—­er none at all—­before I’d be humbugged.”

“Un I,” said Lucien, “would pour Messieur Rousveau vote if my baskett shall all the way up be cotton.”

“Sure ye would,” said Shea, “and ate the cotton too, ef your masther told ye to.  ‘Tis the likes of ye, ye bloomin’ furreighner, that kapes the thrust alive in this country.”

When they were like to come to blows, Kelly, with a mild show of superiority, which is second nature to a section boss, would interfere and restore order.  All day they worked and argued, lifting low joints and lowering high centres; and when the red sun sank in the tree-tops, filtering its gold through the golden leaves, they lifted the car onto the rails and started home.

When the men had mounted, Lucien at the forward handle and Burke and Shea side by side on the rear bar, they waited impatiently for Kelly to light his pipe and seat himself comfortably on the front of the car, his heels hanging near to the ties.

There was no more talk now.  The men were busy pumping, the “management” inspecting the fish-plates, the culverts, and, incidentally, watching the red sun slide down behind the trees.

At the foot of a long slope, down which the men had been pumping with all their might, there was a short bridge.  The forest was heavy here, and already the shadow of the woods lay over the right-of-way.  As the car reached the farther end of the culvert, the men were startled by a great explosion.  The hand-car was lifted bodily and thrown from the track.

The next thing Lucien remembers is that he woke from a fevered sleep, fraught with bad dreams, and felt warm water running over his chest.  He put his hand to his shirt-collar, removed it, and found it red with blood.  Thoroughly alarmed, he got to his feet and looked, or rather felt, himself over.  His fingers found an ugly ragged gash in the side of his neck, and the fear and horror of it all dazed him.