a _property_ once use it again and again if you can." It is a _visual_
thing that binds together your stuff of speech like a dowel in a
mission table.

There are few better places than a railroad train for building
stories; the rhythmic click of the wheels past the fish-plates makes
your thoughts march as a drum urges a column of soldiers. A tentative
layout of the story established in the first act, the educated Kate,
discontented in her blacksmith father's surroundings; the flash
fascination of our transient robber; the robber's distinct lead over
Goodwin's accustomed and older blandishments. The second act saw
Goodwin turned down and the robber preferred. The third act should see
the robber's apprehension and arrest. I milled around the question
of his identification as Illinois and Indiana went past the Pullman
window; and then the one sure and unfailing witness for that purpose
volunteered--the express messenger himself. There was no reason why
this young man shouldn't be a native of Bowling Green, and come home
from St. Louis at the end of certain runs. He would know Goodwin and
the blacksmith's family; but, to put him nearer to them, more "into
the story" sentimentally, I gave Goodwin a little sister, and made the
messenger her accepted lover, with his arrest and detention postponing
the wedding. This need to free his sister's fiancé gave the sheriff
hero a third reason for getting the real robber; the other two being
his official duty and the rivalry for Kate. The messenger and the
sheriff's sister, the helper and the comedy daughter, and Goodwin and
Kate, made three pairs of young lovers. This number might easily
lead to a disastrous diffusion of interest unless the playwright were
careful always to make the work of each couple, even when apparently
about their own personal affairs, really to the forward trend of the
story.