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Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn’t have a fuss with a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk, dropped the coin back into his pocket, and went on into the combination baggage and express car. Here, just inside the door, was Toddles’, or, rather, the News Company’s chest. Toddles lifted the lid; and then his eyes shifted slowly and traveled up the car. Things were certainly going badly with Toddles that night.

There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a holiday trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master; Nulty, the express messenger–and Hawkeye. Toddles’ inventory of the contents of the chest had been hurried–but intimate. A small bunch of six bananas was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly. It wasn’t the first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had pilfered the boy’s chest, not by many–and never paid for the pilfering. That was Hawkeye’s idea of a joke.

Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of Toddles’ presence–and he was talking about Toddles.

“Sure,” said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, “he’ll be a great railroad man some day! He’s the stuff they’re made of! You can see it sticking out all over him! He’s only selling peanuts now till he grows up and—-“

Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the conductor.

“You pay for those bananas,” said Toddles in a low voice–which was high.

“When’ll he grow up?” continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. “I don’t know–you’ve got me. The first time I saw him two years ago, I’m hanged if he wasn’t bigger than he is now–guess he grows backwards. Have a banana?” He offered one to Nulty, who refused it.

“You pay for those bananas, you big stiff!” squealed Toddles belligerently.

Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black eyes on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for the first time in two years offered payment. He fished into his pocket and handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill–there always was a mean streak in Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked, and whose name on the pay roll, by the way, was Reynolds.

“Take fifteen cents out of that,” he said, with no idea that the boy could change the bill.

For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of unholy glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business all around had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run west in the morning.

Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at Toddles’ expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve funds. Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat pile of four quarters–the lead one on the bottom–another neat pile of the odd change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter wouldn’t go very far toward liquidating Hawkeye’s long-standing indebtedness–but it would help some.

Queer, isn’t it–the way things happen? Think of a man’s whole life, aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on–a lead quarter! But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door of every man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing that Toddles wasn’t deaf!

Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his lantern and started through the train to pick up the fates from the last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with the glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car.

“Ticket, please,” said Hawkeye.

“Too busy to buysh ticket,” the man informed him, with heavy confidence. “Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?”

“One-fifty,” said Hawkeye curtly.

The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a two-dollar note.

Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a cash-fare slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the quarters insistently, if somewhat unsteadily.