One day when Henry was registering in the round-house, he saw a letter in the rack for him, and carried it home to read after supper.

When he read it, he jumped out of his chair.  “Why, Henry!” said his wife, putting down her knitting, “what ever’s the matter,—­open switch or red light?”

“Worse, Mary; it’s the end of the track.”

The old engineer tossed the letter over to his wife, sat down, stretched his legs out, locked his fingers, and began rolling his thumbs one over the other, staring at the stove.

When Mrs. Hautman had finished the letter she stamped her foot and declared it an outrage.  She suggested that somebody wanted the La Salle.  “Well,” she said, resigning herself to her fate, “I bet I have that coach-seat out of the cab,—­it’ll make a nice tete-a-tete for the front room.  Superannuated!” she went on with growing disgust.  “I bet you can put any man on the first division down three times in five.”

“It’s me that’s down, Mary,—­down and out.”

“Henry Hautman, I’m ashamed of you! you know you’ve got four years come Christmas—­why don’t you fight?  Where’s your Brotherhood you’ve been paying money to for twenty years?  I bet a ‘Q’ striker comes and takes your engine.”

“No, Mary, we’re beaten.  I see how it all happened now.  You see I began at twenty when I was really but sixteen; that’s where I lose.  I lied to the ‘old man’ when we were both boys; now that lie comes back to me, as a chicken comes home to roost.”

“But can’t you explain that now?”

“Well, not easy.  It’s down in the records—­it’s Scripture now, as the ‘old man’ would say.  No, the best I can do is to take my medicine like a man; I’ve got a month yet to think it over.”

After that they sat in silence, this childless couple, trying to fashion to themselves how it would seem to be superannuated.

The short December days were all too short for Henry.  He counted the hours, marked the movements of the minute-hand on the face of his cab clock, and measured the miles he would have, not to “do” but to enjoy, before Christmas.  As the weeks went by the old engineer became a changed man.  He had always been cheerful, happy, and good-natured.  Now he became thoughtful, silent, melancholy.  There was not a man on the first division but grieved because he was going, but no man would dare say so to Henry.  Sympathy is about the hardest thing a stout heart ever has to endure.

While Henry was out on his last trip his wife waited upon the master-mechanic and asked him to bring his wife over and spend Christmas Eve with Henry and help her to cheer him up; and the “old man” promised to call that evening.