step; see to engine; drive back again; clean
engine; report myself; and home. Twelve hours'
hard and anxious work, and no comfortable
victuals. Yes, our wives are anxious about us;
for we never know when we go out, if we'll ever
come back again. We ought to go home the
minute we leave the station, and report ourselves
to those that are thinking on us and depending
on us; but I'm afraid we don't always. Perhaps
first to the public-house, and perhaps you
would, too, if you were in charge of a engine
all day long. But the wives have a way of
their own, of finding out if we're all right, They
inquire among each other. ' Have you seen my
Jim?' one says. ' No,' says another, ' but Jack
see him coming out of the station half an hour
ago.Then she knows that her Jim's all right,
and knows where to find him if she wants him.
It's a sad thing when any of us have to carry
bad news to a mate's wife. None of us likes
that job. I remember when Jack Davidge was
killed, none of us could face his poor missus
with the news. She had seven children, poor
thing, and two of 'em, the youngest, was down
with the fever. We got old Mrs. Berridge—-
Tom Berridge's mother—- to break it to her.
But she knew summat was the matter, the minute
the old woman went in, and, afore she spoke a
word, fell down like as if she was dead. She lay
all night like that, and never heard from mortal
lips until next morning that her George was
killed. But she knew it in her heart. It's a
pitch and toss kind of a life ours!

"And yet I never was nervous on a engine but
once. I never think of my own life. You go in
for staking that, when you begin, and you get
used to the risk. I never think of the passengers
either. The thoughts of a engine-driver
never go behind his engine. If he keeps his
engine all right, the coaches behind will be all
right, as far as the driver is concerned. But
once I did think of the passengers. My litlle
boy, Bill, was among them that morning. He
was a poor little cripple fellow that we all loved
more nor the others, because he was a cripple,
and so quiet, and wise-like. He was going down
to his aunt in the country, who was to take
care of him for a while. We thought the country
air would do him good. I did think there
were lives behind me that morning; at least, I
thought hard of one little life that was in my
hands. There were twenty coaches on; my little
Bill seemed to me to be in every one of 'em. My
hand trembled as I turned on the steam. I felt
my heart thumping as we drew close to the
pointsman's box; as we neared the Junction, I
was all in a cold sweat. At the end of the first
fifty miles I was nearly eleven minutes behind
time. 'What's the matter with you this morning?'
my stoker said. 'Did you have a drop
too much last night?' 'Don't speak to me,
Fred,' I said, ' till we get to Peterborough; and
keep a sharp look-out, there's a good fellow.'
I never was so thankful in my life as when
I shut off steam to enter the station at Peterborough.
Little Bill's aunt was waiting for him,
and I saw her lift him out of the carriage. I
called out to her to bring him to me, and I took
him upon the engine and kissed him ah, twenty
times I should think—- making him in such a
mess with grease and coal-dust as you never saw.

"I was all right for the rest of the journey.
And I do believe, sir, the passengers were safer
after little Bill was gone. It would never do,
you see, for engine drivers to know too much,
or to feel too much."

No. 3 BRANCH LINE.
THE COMPENSATION HOUSE.

"There's not a looking-glass in all the house,
sir. It's some peculiar fancy of my master's.
There isn't one in any single room in the house."

It was a dark and gloomy-looking building,
and had been purchased by this Company for an
enlargement of their Goods Station. The value
of the house had been referred to what was
popularly called " a compensation jury," and the
house was called, in consequence, The Compensation
House. It had become the Company's property;
but its tenant still remained in possession,
pending the commencement of active building
operations. My attention was originally drawn
to this house because it stood directly in front
of a collection of huge pieces of timber which
lay near this part of the Line, and on which I
sometimes sat for half an hour at a time, when
I was tired by my wanderings about Mugby
Junction.

It was square, cold, grey-looking, built of
rough-hewn stone, and roofed with thin slabs
of the same material. Its windows were few
in number, and very small for the size of
the building. In the great blank, grey broadside,
there were only four windows. The
entrance-door was in the middle of the house;
there was a window  on either side of it, and
there were two more in the single story above.
The blinds were all closely drawn, and, when the
door was shut, the dreary building gave no sign
of life or occupation.

But the door was not always shut. Sometimes
it was opened from within, with a great
jingling of bolts and door-chains, and then a man
would come forward and stand upon the doorstep,
snuffing the air as one might do who was
ordinarily kept on rather a small allowance of that
element. He was stout, thickset, and perhaps
fifty or sixty years old—- a man whose hair was
cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy
beard, and whose eye had a sociable twinkle in it
which was prepossessing. He was dressed,
whenever saw him, in a greenish-brown frock-coat
made of some material which was not cloth, wore
a waistcoat and trousers of light colour, and had
a frill to his shirt—- an ornament, by the way,
which did not seem to go at all well with the
beard, which was continually in contact with it.
It was the custom of this worthy person, after
standing for a short time on the threshold inhaling
the air, to come forward into the road,
and, after glancing at one of the upper windows
in a half mechanical way, to cross over to the
logs, and, leaning over the fence which guarded