The conductor seemed a jolly man, and he took a fatherly interest in Dorothy and Tavia, having a daughter about their age at home, so he said. Yet Dorothy did not feel like telling him about the old tramp whom she and Tavia had seen attempting to board the train.  
“You see, the conductor has his rules to go by,” explained Dorothy, “and we couldn’t expect him to break them for us. I wish we had money to pay the fare of the poor old creature.”
 
“You don’t really know, Dorothy Dale, whether the man is on the step, or not,” urged Tavia.
 
“I’m going to find out,” pronounced her chum, with decision.
 
She left her seat, following the conductor slowly to the end of the car. Ostensibly she went for a drink, but the moment the blue-coated official had passed through to the next car, Dorothy went out into the vestibule. The brakeman chanced to be out of sight at the moment.
 
92 The doors on the “off” side of the vestibule were locked, but Dorothy could peer through the glass. Directly beneath her she could see the broken top of the old army hat.
 
“He’s there!” Dorothy, running back to Tavia. “Whatever shall we do about it?”
 
“I wish Lance was here,” said her friend. “He’d know what to do.”
 
“We can’t have men-folk around to help us out of all our troubles,” Dorothy.
 
“This isn’t trouble,” declared Tavia. “It’s really nothing to us——”
 
“But suppose the poor man should fall off?”
 
“We’re anxious for nothing, I wager,” said Tavia. “He is probably used to riding on car steps.”
 
“It’s such a narrow place,” Dorothy. “He can’t more than cling to it. Oh! here’s a curve!”
 
They whirled around this corner and then over a long trestle that crossed a river. When the train did stop the girls did not see the tramp get off. All the stations chanced to be on the other side, as Killock had been.
 
The of the man whom Dorothy believed to be a fellow-soldier with her own father, Major Dale, was the uppermost topic in Dorothy’s mind and conversation. Tavia began to have another, and more personal, worry.
 
“I could eat a planked steak—plank and all!—right now,” said the flyaway. “Dear me, Doro! I wish your purse was like the widow’s cruse, and never gave out. There’s a car on, too.”
 
They had to satisfy their appetites for the time being by buying some fruit from the train boy. But this was a poor substitute for planked steak—or any other viand.
 
“I hope Aunt Winnie and Ned and Nat will wait for us at Sessions, as I asked them,” sighed Dorothy.
 
“If they don’t, we’ll have to steal a ride,” said Tavia, quickly. “Ned has our tickets, you know.”
 
But that was not a real worry. Dorothy was pretty sure her aunt and the boys would do just as she had asked them to do. What was happening outside that car, on the rear step, was a matter (so she thought) for real anxiety!
 
A dozen times she went back to peer through the window in the vestibule door and caught a glimpse of the top of the Grand Army hat.
 
Perhaps she went once too often—for the contentment of the old man who was cheating the railroad company of a fare. Or, it may have been in some other manner that the brakeman’s attention was called to the presence of the on the step. For he was discovered before94 the train reached the , at eleven o’clock, where Dorothy and Tavia were to leave the train.
 
The conductor had been through again and talked to them, and they had learned when and where to look for the station. Other passengers were already getting their baggage out of the racks, and putting on their light wraps.
 
Suddenly the two friends heard a at the end of the car. Tavia jumped up and looked back.
 
“Oh, Doro!” she cried, in a tone, “they have him!”
 
Dorothy turned quickly and saw the brakeman drag the old tramp into the car and fling him into an end seat.
 
“How rough he is!” gasped Tavia, referring to the railroad employee.
 
Dorothy down the . She would have had the conductor not come at once and taken charge.
 
“On the step, eh? Well! he took his life in his hands,” the conductor. “Give him a drink of water, John. I expect he’s for it—chewing as he has been since we started.”
 
“Oh! what will you do with him?” cried Dorothy, clutching at the conductor’s sleeve.
 
“Nothing very bad, little lady,” assured the conductor, smiling at her. “We’ll hand him over95 to the railroad police at Sessions. They’ll take him to court.”
 
“Oh! must he be punished?”
 
“I am afraid so. The company’s pretty strict. He’s been stealing a ride and the will send him to the rockpile for that.”
 
“But he’s such an old man—and he’s a soldier,” whispered Dorothy, pointing to the button on the lapel of the old coat.
 
The conductor started and looked more closely. “It’s a Grand Army button—sure enough,” he muttered. Then he looked into the soot-lined face of the man and shook his head.
 
“Stole it, most likely,” was his comment, and went on through the car.
 
Dorothy did not believe that. The man’s eyes were dull, and it was evident that he was much . A traveling-man came up and offered him a drink from his pocket-flask. Dorothy was sorry to see how eagerly the trembling old hands went out for the spirits.
 
Soon color returned to the flabby cheeks, and a certain look of confidence to the old eyes, after the tramp had the liquor.
 
He was kept in the seat until the train stopped at the Sessions platform. Then, as the girls hurried out to find their friends, Dorothy saw the old man with the Grand Army button being taken off the car by two policemen in plain clothes.
 
“Dorothy Dale!”
 
“Tavia Travers!”
 
Two lusty shouts greeted the girls the moment they showed themselves upon the steps of the car. Ned ............