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It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold–the thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the mountains–and by eight o’clock, where there had been rain before, there was now a thin sheeting of ice over everything–very thin–you know the kind–rails and telegraph wires glistening like the decorations on a Christmas tree–very pretty–and also very nasty running on a mountain grade. Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, had dripped from the car roofs to the platforms–the local did not boast any closed vestibules–and had also been blown upon the car steps with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed there. Not a very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not serious, demanding a little extra caution, that was all.

Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as he started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the first-class coach. In another hour now he’d be up in the dispatcher’s room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big dispatcher growl at him in his bluff way: “Use your head–use your head–Hoogan!” It was always “Hoogan,” never “Toddles.” “Use your head”–Donkin was everlastingly drumming that into him; for the dispatcher used to confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and demand Toddles’ instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be a great dispatcher–like Donkin. “Use your head, Hoogan”–that’s the way Donkin talked–“anybody can learn a key, but that doesn’t make a railroad man think quick and think right. Use your—-“

Toddles stepped out on the platform–and walked on ice. But that wasn’t Toddles’ undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little jerk at the “air.” And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at them–and his heels went out from under him. He ricocheted down the steps, snatched desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from the train, and, head, heels, arms and body going every which way at once, rolled over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the point of Toddles’ departure from the train, the right of way for a hundred yards was strewn with “the latest magazines” and “new books just out to-day.”

Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the darkness. The tail lights of the local disappeared. No one aboard would miss Toddles until they got into Big Cloud–and found him gone. Which is Irish for saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a newsboy’s idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the rules.

It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long while before consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he moved, tried to get up–and fell back with a quick, sharp cry of pain. He lay still, then, for a moment. His ankle hurt him frightfully, and his back, and his shoulder, too. He put his hand to his face where something seemed to be trickling warm–and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little warrior, tried to think. They hadn’t been going very fast when he fell off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it was, he was hurt, badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating him.