more than three years old, and how he got there is yet a mystery. Jack
took a fancy to him and gave him a home while he lived. I think the
young scamp still lives with the widow at Runaway Tavern."

"He seems like a more than commonly smart boy."

"Oh, he can appear well enough when he is a mind to. But Mr. Gammon had
to turn him off of his section for downright disobedience of orders.
Why, only yesterday he and a man named Baxter jumped on to the hand-car
in the very teeth of the northern-bound mail, and came very near
wrecking the train, to say nothing of ending their own worthless lives."

"Oh, well, if you know the boy, of course you are more competent to
judge of him than I. But I must confess he impressed me very favorably.
What news from Draco?"

So the august officials of the great Pen Yan gave no employment to the
poor boy who had come so far for a situation, whether he deserved a
better fate or not.

Meanwhile, the boy, unconscious that his fate had already been decided
upon, hastened to the Fairfax Station, to take the homeward-bound train,
which would be due in a few minutes.

The Pen Yan railway system forms upon the map of that part of the
country a stupendous letter Y. The Fairfax Fork running north-northwest
makes one branch of the arm meeting at the Big Y, as the junction is
called--the line of the upper arm, where the two tracks unite in one to
reach across a mountainous, often sparsely-settled, country for over
three hundred miles. At the time we write it was a single-track road