The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-06-30


 ing wistfully up to him.
 "Then I'll help you," he said, climb ing down..
 With great effort he hoisted the child up on to the bumpers between the cars, and from that point, with the help of the brake bars, he pushed her to the top, and tumbled her over into the soft culm. She was little frightened at first on finding herself up so high, but her fear very soon departed, and she laughed and played gleefully with Tim in the black dirt till her little rosy face was streaked with ebony, and her little, chubby hands were black as coals, and her cunning white apron, alas was no longer white.
 Tim had planted the flag at the head of the foremost car, and had mounted his drum to serve as 8 piece of artil- lery, and was busily engaged in throw ing up earthworks of culm with a piece of shingle which he had climbed down to secure, and brought up in triumph.
 He became sensible of peculiar mo- ton of the car. He looked up, and thought at first that the long train on the main track was slipping back toward the village; but one startled glance to the other side proved to him that the cars on which he and Daisy had been playing were moving slowly down the siding.
 Somehow, in climbing up the last time he had loosened the brake, and the movements of the children after- ward had been sufficient to change the cars from their state of rest to one of motion.
 Tim was frightened. He grasped Daisy by the arm and pulled her to the end of the car, and began to climb down. In another moment she would have fallen between the wheels to the track. He saw the danger, and pushed her back into the car. It was impos- sible to keep her out in this way; it would have been difficult and danger ous with the car at rest. Then it oc- cured to Tim to try to stop the cars with the brake, as he had seen the runners do it.
 The brakes on these gravity railroad cars are composed of a system of levers, acting on the wheels by the application of force, and the force is applied by jumping on the end of the last lever ill the series, and pressing it down against vertical ratchet at the end of the car.
 Tim climbed out on this lever and jumped on it with all his might; but he had neither the strength nor the skill to force it down against the ratchet, and it sprang back and tossed him over into the car. He tried it again, and yet again, but always with the same result.
 Something else must be done. He thought to throw Daisy off the rear end of the car, but he feared that the violence of the fall against the rails and ties would kill her, and he knew that if he threw her from the side she would roll back under the wheels and be crushed.
 He spent another minute trying to form some plan for her escape, but he could think of no way to get her safely to the ground. Already the cars had passed out from the siding and were running steadily down the main track. Tim knew that if they , did not leap the rails at some switch or curve, they would, sooner or later, come into collision with other cars, r and that, in either case, there could be but one result.
 ) He could not save Daisy, that was hnunnd h0rn bx,< fhnro c%f1l time 70 save himself; they were not yet going too fast for that.
 The desire for self-preservation is a strong one in the human breast, and before Tim fairly knew what he was doing, he had let himself down at the end of the car and stepped out to the wheel-frame at the side. From there it was easy for him to jump to the ground, and in another moment he would have been out of peril, and Daisy would have been riding alone to disaster.
 But in that moment there came upon him such an overwhelming sense of shame at what he was about to do {; , the cowardice of it confronted him so savagely, child that he was, that he , turned, stepped back to the bumper, , climbed up across the brake bars, and over into the car, and went and sat down again at Daisy's side. She still had the look in her eyes, partly of wonder, and partly of fear, that had possessed them at the start. She hardly knew whether Tim had been trying to stop the cars or to make them go faster. She looked up into his face as he came back to her, to try to discover whether it meant sport or danger.
 In one moment the boy saw her per- plexity, and in the next an inspiration Soized him He dofarmined fho< hnr