Rockwell led the way to a taxi cab and insisted that Pop enter with him. A ride uptown brought them to Rockwell's brownstone mansion just off Fifth Avenue. Pop was given the most wonderful hot repast he had ever eaten and a new suit of clothes. Also a job. He became motorman of a Crosstown Railways horse car operating over De Lacey Street.
Ten years later, when William Rockwell died, the half mile or more of trackage set in the cobbles of De Lacey Street and the ancient horse car and animal operated by Pop Dillon were the only properties still owned by the Crosstown Railways Company. All the rest had succumbed to the power lines. Rockwell's fortune, due to unwise investments, had dwindled to nothing. The brownstone mansion went to his creditors. The Crosstown Railways Company went to Pop Dillon.
"Hold onto it," Rockwell warned Pop a few hours before the magnate died. "That franchise will be valuable some day. The Inter-City people will need that half mile of track so they can hitch up their system properly. They'll come after you to sell and you can get some real money for it. Meantime, remember that the franchise calls for at least: one round trip a day to be made over the line. Make that trip if you have to do it for years with an empty car. Make the trip and keep the franchise."
For ten more years now Pop Dillon had been making the trip. And the car, as Rockwell had predicted, was on many occasions empty. Pop Dillon had become a familiar figure in the De Lacey
