would be left penniless and without
a home. What would then become of his mother--and what would become
of the little tad? She, whom he had been planning to educate like a
veritable lady. For all that year he had talked of his ambition for his
little daughter to every one he met. All Bonneville knew of it. What
a mark for gibes he had made of himself. The workingman turned farmer!
What a target for jeers--he who had fancied he could elude the Railroad!
He remembered he had once said the great Trust had overlooked his little
enterprise, disdaining to plunder such small fry. He should have known
better than that. How had he ever imagined the Road would permit him to
make any money?

Anger was not in him yet; no rousing of the blind, white-hot wrath that
leaps to the attack with prehensile fingers, moved him. The blow merely
crushed, staggered, confused.

He stepped aside to give place to a coatless man in a pink shirt, who
entered, carrying in his hands an automatic door-closing apparatus.

"Where does this go?" inquired the man.

Dyke sat down for a moment on a seat that had been removed from a
worn-out railway car to do duty in Ruggles's office. On the back of a
yellow envelope he made some vague figures with a stump of blue pencil,
multiplying, subtracting, perplexing himself with many errors.

S. Behrman, the clerk, and the man with the door-closing apparatus
involved themselves in a long argument, gazing intently at the top panel
of the door. The man who had come to fix the apparatus was unwilling to
guarantee it, unless a sign was put on the outside of the door, warning
incomers that the door was self-closing. This sign would cost fifteen
cents extra.

"But you didn't say anything about this when the thing was ordered,"
declared S. Behrman. "No, I won't pay it, my friend. It's an
overcharge."

"You needn't think," observed the clerk, "that just because you are
dealing with the Railroad you are going to work us."

Genslinger came in, accompanied by Delaney. S. Behrman and the
clerk, abruptly dismissing the man with the door-closing machine, put
themselves behind the counter and engaged in conversation with these
two. Genslinger introduced Delaney. The buster had a string of horses he
was shipping southward. No doubt he had come to make arrangements with
the Railroad in the matter of stock cars. The conference of the four men
was amicable in the extreme.

Dyke, studying the figures on the back of the envelo