the

come at leaving time he did not come at all. At ten o'clock conductor sent to the engine-house for another engineer, and at 10.45, instead of an engineer, a fireman came, with orders for John Alexander to run the "Roger William" until further orders, I never fired a locomotive again.

I went over that road the saddest-hearted man that ever made a

maiden trip. I hoped there would be some tidings of Jim at home--there were none. I can never forget the blow it was to "mother"; how she braced up on account of her children-but oh, that sad face! Christmas came, and with it the daughter, and then there were two instead of one: the boy was frantic the first day, and playing marbles the next.

Christmas day there came a letter. It was from Jim brief and cold enough-but it was such a comfort to "mother." It was directed to Mary J. Dillon, and bore the New York post-mark. It read:

"Uncle Sam is in need of men, and those who lose with Venus may win with Mars. Enclosed papers you will know best what to do with. Be a mother to the children-you have three of them.

"JAMES DILLON."

He underscored the three-he was a mystery to me. Poor "mother"! She declared that no doubt "poor James's head was affected." The papers with the letter were a will, leaving her all, and a power of

attorney, allowing her to dispose of or use the money in the bank. Not a line of endearment or love for that faithful heart that lived on love, asked only for love, and cared for little else. That Christmas was a day of fasting and prayer for us. Many letters did we send, many advertisements were printed, but

we never got a word from James Dillon, and Uncle Sam's army was too big to hunt

in. We were a changed family: quieter and more tender of one another's feelings, but changed.

In the fall of '64 they changed the runs around, and I was booked to run in to M. Ed, the boy, was firing for me. There was no reason why "mother" should stay in Boston, and we moved out to the little farm. That daughter, who was a second "mother" all over, used to come down to meet us at the station with the horse, and I talked "sweet" to her; yet at a certain point in the sweetness I became dumb.

"Ilow came you by that?""

Along in May, '65, "mother" got a package from Washington. It contained a tintype of herself; a card with a hole in it (made evidently by having been forced over a button), on which was her name and the old address in town; then there was a ring and a saber, and on the blade of the saber was etched, "Presented to Lieutenant Jas. Dillon, for bravery on the field of battle." At the bottom of the parcel was a note in a strange hand, saying simply, "Found on the body of Lieutenant Dillon after the battle of Five Forks."

Poor "mother"! Her heart was wrung again, and again the scalding tears fell. She never told her suffering, and no one ever knew what she bore. Her face was a little sadder and sweeter, her hair a little whiter that was all.

I am not a bit superstitious don't believe in signs or presentiments or prenothings but when I went to get my pay on the 14th day of December, 1866, it gave me a little start to find in it the bill bearing the chromo of the Goddess of Liberty with the little three-cornered piece of courtplaster that Dillon had put on her windpipe. I got rid of it at once, and said nothing to "mother" about it; but I kept thinking of it and seeing it all the next day and night.

On the night of the 16th, I was oiling around my Black Maria to take out a local leaving our western terminus just after dark, when a tall, slim old gentleman stepped up to me and asked if I was the engineer. I don't suppose I looked like the president I confessed, and held up

my torch, so I could see his face-a pretty tough-looking face. The white mustache was one of that military kind, reinforced with whiskers on the right and left flank of the mustache proper. He wore glasses, and one of the lights was ground glass. The right cheekbone was crushed in, and a red scar extended across the eye and cheek; the

he.

well," to hear

A said he, he was eying me pretty sharp. "A good

engineer." "Perhaps," said

I coaxed the old veteran to ride on the engine the first coal-burner I had had. He seemed more than glad to comply. Ed was as black as a negro, and swearing about coal-burners in general and this one in particular, and made so much noise with his fire-irons after we started, that the old man came over and sat behind me, so as to be able to talk.

The first time I looked around after getting out of the yard, I noticed his long slim hand on the top of the reverse-lever. Did you ever notice how it seems to make an ex-engineer feel better and more satisfied to get his hand on a reverse-lever and feel the life-throbs of the great giant under him? Why, his hand goes there by instinct-just as an ambulance surgeon will feel for the heart of the boy with a broken leg.

66

I asked the stranger to give her a whirl," and noticed with what eager joy he took hold of her. I also observed with surprise that he seemed to know all about "fourmile hill," where most new men got stuck. He caught me looking at his face, and touching the scar, remarked: "A little love pat,

that I had been

running for three years that takes the fresh off a fellow; then, when I had the typhoid, my hair laid off, and was never reinstated, and when I got well, the whiskers that

had always refused to growcame on with a rush, and they were red. And again, I had tried to switch with an old hookmotion in the night and forgot to take out the starting-bar, and she threw it at me, knocking out some teeth; and taking it altogether, I was a changed man.

"Where's

John?" he said

finally.

"Here," said I.

"No!"

"Yes."

He took my

hand, and said, "John, I left all that was dear to me once, because I was jealous of you. I never

knew how you came to have that money or why, and don't want to. Forgive me."

"That is the first time I ever heard of that," said "mother."

"I had it to buy this farm for you-a Christmas present if you had waited," said I. "That is the first time I ever heard of that," said he.

"And you might have been shot," said "mother," getting up close.

"I tried my darndest to be. I got promoted so fast."

That's why

"Oh, James!" and her arms were around his neck again.

"And I sent that saber home myself, never intending to come back,"

"She looked up... as he too on his slouchuun "Oh, James, how could you!" "Mother, how can you forgive me?" "Mother" was still for a minute, looking at the fire in the grate. "James, it is late in life to apply such tests, but love is like gold; ours will be better now the dross has been burned away in the fire. what I did for love of you, and you did what you did for love of me; let us all commence to live again in the old way," and those arms of hers could not keep away from his neck.

I did

Ed went out with tears in his eyes, and I beckoned the daughter to follow me. We passed into the parlor, drew the curtain over the doorway-and there was nothing but that rag between us and heaven,

THE walls bristled with great horned heads

of the Indian buffalo; the floors were spread with tiger skins, bear skins, leopard skins; and from opposite sides of the hall, like ugly sentinels, looked down two skulls of the rhinoceros, most formidable beast of the jungle. This was the home of a quiet English gentleman, Peter Burges, Esq., of Bristol, known nevertheless in India, where the big-bore rifles crack, as a sportsman whose nerve fails him not when the tiger springs and whose gun comes up steady to the rhino's rush. I noticed that there were no lion skins about.

"No," said Mr. Burges, "you can't shoot lions from elephants; most of my trophies have been won in the howdah."

So we talked about going after big game on the back of a lurching pachyderm, as they do it in the tall grass region north of Calcutta.

"People have no conception," continued Mr. Burges, "of the height and thickness of this grass. I have seen it stretching for miles thirty or forty feet high, a dense forest of grass covering the plain. When the beating line goes through it, everything is swallowed up, elephants, howdahs, riders; from a little distance you see only a swaying of the tops. If a man were dropped into this sea of grass, he would certainly die there; he could never force his way out, for the stems of the grass are as thick as saplings, and stand very close together. I went down into it once off my elephant, and the darkness was like the blackest night. I could not even see the sky overhead for the thick interlacing of shoots and leaves. These pictures will give you a slight idea of the character of the grass, but of course I could get no results with my camera in the densest part. This one shows a patch of wild banana.