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The snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and he learns to distinguish between noises between the rattle of a loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped embankment between the 'Hoot! toot! that scares wandering cows from the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal.

He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at Duane, who had turned to watch him. "Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow." With which contemptuous information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys.

At this moment the whistle sounded shrilly, and we felt the grind of the air-brakes. 'The Pegram signal again, cried Kombs, with something almost like enthusiasm. 'This is indeed luck. We will get out here, Whatson, and test the matter. As the train stopped, we got out on the right-hand side of the line.

Fotheringham shook his head in reply. "Does that mean there is none, or you don't know?" Again the messenger shook his head. "Well, I reckon your right, all silver, too heavy and don't amount to much." As he was talking, the whistle of the engine suddenly sound two short notes, and the air-brakes were applied. The train stopped, and the noise of men walking on the gravel was heard.

Oddly enough it was Judith, usually so much less quick than Sylvia, who asked the intelligent questions and listened attentively to her mother's explanations about the working of the air-brakes, and the switching systems in railroad yards, and the harvesting of the crops in the flat, rich country gliding past the windows.

When they see the Nadia trundling in, they say, 'Here comes old Automatic Air-Brakes. And it fits him." "But I don't quite understand why he should want to put the brakes on here and now," Ford interposed. "I know he is against the scheme, personally; but he is here as the representative of a majority which has committed itself to the expansion measure, isn't he?"

Lorenzo Coffin wrought for the application of Christianity to railway men. When finally the law was passed, compelling safety-couplers and air-brakes, and when, in the constitution of New York State, the limit of five thousand dollars replevin for a human life destroyed by a corporation was abolished, and no limit set, there were two new triumphs of Christianity.

The road, being privately owned, was, like most logging-roads, neglected as to roadbed and rolling-stock; also it was undermanned, and the brake- man, who also acted as switchman, had failed to set the hand-brakes on the leading truck after the engineer had locked the air-brakes.

This was before the days of mile-long freight-trains with air-brakes and patent couplers. Over the grades of the Transcontinental no engine yet had pulled more than twenty "empties." There was ever the danger of breaking in two. In the dim interior of the caboose the conductor, with Geordie Graham by his side, was bending over a battered and dishevelled form.

With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming out, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial mails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were all choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of machinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers!