Part 2 — RIGHT THROUGH A BARN.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

"Rube," said Bun Gates, when they came together one day after breakfast, "did you hear about Squire Cudworth's new barn?"

"Guess there isn't anything more to hear about it. Folks didn't talk of anything else while he was putting it up. Father said it would hold horses enough to run a livery-stable."

"That isn't it. I heard all about it at breakfast. The railroad's goin' to run right through it."

"Right through the barn? I wish they'd run it through the academy, if 'twasn't for spoiling the green."

"It's cut Pop Simmons's orchard right in two, and they've tore away Widow McCue's pig-pen, spite of all Felix and Biddy could do to stop 'em. Now it's the big barn."

"Biggest barn there ever was anywhere around here. It's just awful. Did you ever see a railroad?"

"Only the streak they've made along where this one's going to come. I'll tell you what father said, though."

"What did he say, Bun?"

"He said it was one of old Squire Cudworth's jokes. There was a quarrel between him, and the railroad, and so he put the barn there to keep it from coming through."

"It won't do it, Bun. A railroad'll go right through a hill and not half try."

"Come on, Rube, we'll be late; but father says he guesses the railroad didn't make anything very heavy out of the Squire's joke."

When the class in arithmetic was called up that fore-noon, Bun Gates and Rube Hollenhouser went down to the foot of it, one after the other, for the first time that academy term. When they got there and could have a good look at each other's slates, they each knew what sort of a picture the other could make of Squire Cudworth's big barn, with something full of fire and smoke and steam smashing into it at both ends.

The afternoon wore away, a little at a time, until it was all gone, but every boy they knew had heard of what was coming to Squire Cudworth's barn by that time, and at least a dozen of them wanted to go and have a look at it.

Squire Cudworth was standing at the corner of the barn, a very large, fat, rosy-faced man, with his hands in his pockets, and he looked as if he were waiting for something. He chuckled all over, and they could hear him jingle the money in his pockets as he recognized the boys.

"That's the railroad, boys. Them's the ties, and some call 'em sleepers. The rails are glued down on 'em. You'll see some men come along pretty soon with great bundles of iron rails in one hand and pots of glue in the other. They're 'most here now. By to-morrer night that barn of mine won't be a safe place for hosses. It's awful, boys—jest awful!"

"How do you s'pose they'll get through the barn?" asked Bun.

"Can't say. I've kep' 'em off long as I could. That's what I'm here for now. We don't need any railroad in Prome Centre. That's what I told 'em. If they'd only dig the creek out good and deep, so it would be of some use. They wouldn't, though, and I might as well have built my barn right in the middle of the creek."

Every boy in the crowd was listening to him, but not one of them could see what there was in it all that made the old Squire chuckle so. Three or four asked,

"Does it go through on Friday?"

"Day after to-morrer, boys. I shall be out of breath by that time. Have to go home and go to bed, and put all my hosses in the old barn up on the hill. You'd all better be here then. Tell all the other boys. Have 'em all come." Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, and the bunches of keys and the small change jingled merrily, as if the Squire were making fun of the railroad, or the boys, or of his misfortunes.

"We'll all be here," said Rube. "Boys, there'll be something worth seeing, sure's you live."

They were most of them at one place or another along the track before school next morning, and at the noon recess they compared notes of the matters they had seen—men spiking down rails with big hammers, for instance, instead of glue-pots. It was a great time for a lot of boys who had never seen anything of the kind before, and Rube Hollenhouser stirred up their envy a little. He said:

"Dolf Zimmerman's been on a railroad. He told me all about it. There was an accident, too, and he'd have been killed as dead as a hammer if he'd been there."

"Dolf Zimmerman!" exclaimed a fellow who lived away at the upper end of the village. "Who cares for him? He's travelled, that's all. This railroad of ours is going to run right through Cudworth's barn. I guess he wouldn't want to be riding on it just then."

There was a general agreement with that opinion, but the boys who lived at places below Zimmerman's store all found an errand in there before the day was over. Some of them only bought a cent's worth of something, and looked at Dolf, but three or four asked him questions right out, and it was Felix McCue who got the most out of him. The Widow McCue never traded at Zimmerman's, and it was a bold thing for Felix to walk in and ask of Dolf over the counter,

"What's the price of yer bist Jayvy coffee?"

"Thirty-five cents a pound."

"That's what I wanted to know. Do yiz think it'll be any chaper after the railroad gits through the barrn?"

"Oh, you get eout! You don't want any coffee."

"Don't I, thin? I don't belave ye know any more about a railroad than I do meself. Come on, b'yes. He's been humbuggin' ye."

Rube Hollenhouser afterward stood up manfully for Dolf Zimmerman's reputation as a traveller, and all the cows in Prome Centre went to their pastures very early the next morning. That was Friday, and it was to be the last day of the mortal life of Squire Cudworth's big barn, and there were a good many older people, as well as very young ones, who were willing to hurry through their breakfasts, and walk over to see what the Squire was going to do about it. Everybody knew more or less about the quarrel between him and the railway company, and there was not a doubt in the minds of his fellow-citizens but what he had beaten the corporation in every point but the one of keeping his barn.

There he was, when Rube and Bun and little Jeff Gates, and a crowd of other boys and their brothers and sisters, and some of their fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles, began to swarm around and look at him. There was the Squire, indeed, and his face was redder than ever, and Bun Gates remarked,

"I say, Rube, how he does jingle!"

"Yes, but haven't they made that railroad jingle? They've nailed down the rails 'most up to the stable-door on each side. If an engine should come now, it could run its nose against the barn."

"They've got to do it, Rube. They've got to smash it right through."

"I say, Bun, the stable's full of men. They're working at something. Hear 'em hammer?"

"There's another lot around outside. See 'em?"

"Hear 'em in the barn! Wonder 'f they'd let us in."

"Guess not. I don't want to go in, neither. Hey! What's that?"

Every face in the gathering crowd was suddenly turned toward the north, as if one pull had fetched them all around at the same instant. Not that they saw anything, but that the deafest man among them could hear the whistle of the coming locomotive. It would be the first of its kind ever seen in Prome Centre, and now it was gathering itself, they all knew, for a rush down that track at Squire Cudworth's barn.

More boys were coming, and they all asked questions the moment they could get their breaths after they reached the crowd and had one look at the barn. It was there yet, and so was the Squire, but there had been another awful whistle, up north, beyond Pop Simmons's orchard.

"Rube," said Bun, "those fellows are just a-jerking that stable out of its boots. They're h'isting the roof off now."

"Hear 'em hammering inside? There's something going on. Don't they just swarm, though, and can't they work!"

It was a simple fact that the railway company had sent a good many men to take care of the last obstacle in its way, and Squire Cudworth's joke lasted to the very end. He began to grow redder and redder in the face. Then he jingled more than ever for a minute, and then he stopped jingling altogether, for just then it seemed as if the whole side of the stable was stripped off at a push or two. The roof was already off. One minute more and the ends were gone, doors and all, and a well-dressed, gentlemanly person stepped out along the track.

"Boys!" shouted Rube. "There's the railroad now. Inside the stable."

"If they haven't put down a track right where the floor was!" said Bun.

There sounded another tremendous shriek from beyond the orchard, and a cloud of smoke and steam began to move along over the tree-tops.

"Here she comes, boys!"

"She's a-coming! She's a coming!"

"Hark, Rube," said Bun. "What's that man saying to Squire Cudworth?"

They heard him, and he said it very politely.

"Quick work, eh, Mr. Cudworth?"

"Sharp. Far as you've gone. Think you'll get the whole of it off to-day?"

"Off? Oh no. Don't you see? We're making a station-house out of the main barn. Just the thing. Set it up a little higher; that's all. Quite a saving of money to the company."

"Bun," said Rube, "did you ever see old Squire Cudworth look so angry as he does now? Guess they must have got the joke on him somehow."

"It'll make him sick if they have."

"Hey! She's 'most got here!"

They were all holding their breaths for the next minute or so, for there was the first locomotive they had ever seen outside of a picture, and it was whistling and coughing and ringing its bell and backing and starting and doing everything but dance, right through where Squire Cudworth's stable had been.

"Rube, they're not going to pull down any more of the barn."

"Tell you what, though, they never'd have got through the way they did if they hadn't laid some track inside and knocked the doors down."

"Course they wouldn't. I say, old Squire Cudworth's going home."

"Hear the 'cademy bell! Did you know it was nine o'clock? What'll we say to Miss Eccles?"

"I don't care so much, Rube. She won't get a roomful till this crowd gets there. There's about as many girls as boys."

"Black marks all 'round. She's seen a railroad before, or she'd have been here herself. I ain't so sorry as I was about that barn. Do you know what's a station-house?"

"I guess I do, but we'd better stop after school and ask Dolf Zimmerman."

At the supper table that evening, Bun Gates heard his father say to his mother: "Squire Cudworth? Oh yes, he got a good price for his barn. What made him sick was the railway superintendent thanking him for building them so nice a station-house, just where they wanted it. He tried to laugh, but he couldn't, and everybody else did."

"GOOD-MORNING!"