leading engine and shouted to the occupants of the cab,--

"For God's sake hold on a few minutes. We've got a dozen frozen men with
us we must send on to Fort Warrener." And the train was held.

Meantime, those far to the rear in the sleeper knew nothing of what was
going on ahead. The car was warm and comfortable, and most of its
occupants were apparently appreciative of its shelter and coseyness in
contrast with the cheerless scene without. A motherly-looking woman had
produced her knitting, and was blithely clicking away at her needles,
while her enterprising son, a youth of four summers and undaunted
confidence in human nature, tacked up and down the aisle and made
impetuous incursions on the various sections by turns, receiving such
modified welcome as could be accorded features streaked with mingled
candy and cinders, and fingers whose propensity to cling to whatsoever
they touched was due no more to instincts of a predatory nature than to
the adhesive properties of the glucose which formed so large a
constituent of the confections he had been industriously consuming since
early morning. Four men playing whist in the rearmost section, two or
three commercial travellers, whose intimacy with the porter and airs of
easy proprietorship told of an apparent controlling interest in the
road, a young man of reserved manners, reading in a section all by
himself, a baby sleeping quietly upon the seat opposite the two
passengers first mentioned, and a Maltese kitten curled up in the lap of
one of them, completed the list of occupants.

The proximity of the baby and the kitten furnishes strong presumptive
evidence of the sex and general condition of the two passengers referred
to, and renders detail superfluous. A baby rarely travels without a
woman, or a kitten with a woman already encumbered with a baby. The baby