My name is Martin—James Briggs Martin—but almost everybody calls me Tallow, because once when I was younger I saw old Uncle Ike Bond rubbing tallow on his boots to shine them, and then hurried home and fixed mine up with the stub of a candle and went to school. I guess it couldn’t have smelled very good, for everybody seemed to notice it, even teacher, and she asked me what in the world I’d been getting into. After that all the boys called me Tallow, and always will, I guess. I tell you about me first only because I’m writing this account of what happened. Mark Tidd is really the fellow I’m writing about, and Mark’s father and mother, and the engine Mr. Tidd was inventing out in his barn, a…
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