The Steel Horse. Charles Austin Fosdick

"Why, can't you see? If it hadn't been for my lamp I should have taken the worst header anybody ever heard of. How some fellows can run around on their wheels after dark without a light, and take the chances of breaking their necks, beats my time. I wouldn't do it for any money."

"Great Scott! How do you suppose that pile of things came on the track?"

"It isn't a pile of things. It is a big rock which has rolled down from the bank above, and we have discovered it in time to prevent a terrible railroad disaster."

"The rains loosened it, probably."

"Well, what are we standing here for? Let's take hold, all hands, and roll it off before the train comes along."

"We can't roll it off. It's half as big as Rube Royall's cabin. It seems strange to me that it stopped so squarely in the middle of the track. I should think it ought to have gathered headway enough during its descent to roll clear across the roadbed, and down into the gulf on the other side."

The speakers were your old friends Joe Wayring and his two chums, Roy Sheldon and Arthur Hastings; and I am one of the Expert Columbias who were introduced to your notice in the concluding chapters of the second volume of this series of books. I have been urged by my companions to describe the interesting and exciting incidents that happened during our vacation run from one end of the State to the other and back again, on which we set out just a week ago to-day. I have begun the task with many misgivings. This is my first appearance as a story-teller; but then my friends, Old Durability and the Canvas Canoe, labored under the same disadvantage. When I am through it will be for you to decide which one of us has interested you the most.

You will remember that when the Canvas Canoe's adventures were ended for the season and he was "laid up in ordinary" (by which I mean the recess in Joe Wayring's room), it was midwinter. The ponds and lakes were frozen over, and the hills surrounding the little village of Mount Airy were covered with snow. The canoe had just been hauled up from the bottom of Indian River, where he had lain for four long, dismal months, wondering what was to become of him and the six thousand dollars he had carried down with him when he was "Snagged and Sunk" by the big tree that was carried out of Sherwin's Pond by the high water. You know that Roy Sheldon discovered him with the aid of his "water-scope," that Joe got his canoe back (a little the worse for his captivity, it must be confessed, for there was a gaping wound in his side), and that the money quickly found its way into the hands of the officers of the Irvington bank, from whom it had been stolen by the two sneak-thieves who were finally captured by Mr. Swan and his party.

Before this happened Matt Coyle's wife and boys had been shut up in the New London jail to await their trial, which was to come off as soon as Matt himself had been arrested. The truth of the matter was, the Indian Lake guides were so incensed at Matt for his daring and persistent efforts to break up their business and to ruin the two hotels at the lake, that they threatened to make short work of him and all his worthless tribe; and as the guides were men who never said a thing of this sort unless they meant it, the authorities were of opinion that the old woman and the boys would be safer in the New London lock-up than they would be if confined in the tumble-down calaboose at Irvington. But now it appeared that Matt Coyle could not be arrested and brought to trial, for the good and sufficient reason that he was dead. He was drowned when the canvas canoe was snagged and sunk.

Joe Wayring and his chums declared, from the first, that if the squatter had attempted to run out of the river into Sherwin's Pond during the freshet that prevailed at the time of his flight, he had surely come to grief. If three strong boys, who were expert with the oars, could not pull a light skiff against the current that ran out of the pond, how could Matt Coyle hope to stem it in a heavily-loaded canoe and with a single paddle? If he had been foolish enough to try it, he would never be heard of again until his body was picked up somewhere in the neighborhood of the State hatchery. The finding of the canoe and his valuable cargo at the bottom of the river led others to Joe's way of thinking, and it was finally conceded on all hands that the squatter would never again rob unguarded camps, or renew his attempts to "break up the business of guiding." Nothing remained, then, but to remove his wife and boys to Irvington and hold them for trial at the next term of the circuit court. The grand jury first took the matter in hand, and Joe Wayring and his chums, much to their disgust,

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