“Then if you are a magician you ought to change her into a nasty black spidah, to pay her back fo’ shuttin’ me up with them!” Lloyd was delighted with this new play.  For the time it seemed as if she really were escaping from a castle prison.  Faster and faster they went.  Jonesy, who had followed them to the second curve, stood watching them with wistful eyes, wishing he could be with them.  They passed the depot, and then the hand-car seemed to grow smaller and smaller as it rolled away, until it was only a moving speck in the distance.  Then he turned and walked back to the section-house.

“I s’pect we’ve gone about far enough,” said Keith, after awhile.  “We’d better turn around now and go back, or the picnic will all be over before we get our share.  Let’s wait here a minute till I rest my arms, and then we’ll start.”

The place where they had stopped was the loneliest part of the track that could be found in miles, on either side.  It was in the midst of a thick beech woods, and the twitter of a bird, now and then, was the only sound in all the deep stillness.

“What lovely green moss on that bank!” cried the Little Colonel.  “Wouldn’t it make a beautiful carpet for our playhouse down by the old mill?”

“I’ll get you some,” said Keith, gallantly springing from the car and clambering up the bank.  Taking out his knife, he began to cut great squares of the velvety green moss, and pile it up to carry back to the hand-car.

Meanwhile Jonesy waited at the section-house, digging his heels into the cinders that lined the track, and looking impatiently down the road.  Presently the section boss came limping along painfully, and sat down on the bank in the warm spring sunshine.  He had dropped a piece of heavy machinery on his foot, the week before, and was only able to hobble short distances.

Everybody in the Valley was interested in Jonesy since the fire and the Benefit had made him so well known, and the man was glad of this opportunity to satisfy his curiosity about the boy.  Jonesy, with all the fearlessness of a little street gamin brought up in a big city, answered him fearlessly, even saucily at times, much to the man’s amusement.

“So you want to get a job around here, do you?” said the man, presently, with a grin.  “Maybe I can give you one.  Know anything about railroadin’?”

“Heaps,” answered Jonesy.  “Well, I’d ought to, seem’ as I’ve lived next door to the engine yards all my life, and spent my time dodgin’ the cop on watch there, when I was tryin’ to steal rides on freight-cars and such.”

“Is that what you’re hangin’ around here now for?” asked the man, with a good-natured twinkle in his eyes.

“Nope!  I’m waiting for that MacIntyre kid to come back this way.  He went down the track a bit ago on a hand-car, playing rescue a princess with one of the girls at the picnic,”

The section boss sprang up with an exclamation of alarm.  “How far’s he gone?” he asked.  “There’s a special due to pass here in a few minutes.”