he hadn't four hundred and
thirty dollars with him, but if I'd let the train go, he'd pay me in a
week. I couldn't quite do that, so him and the conductor had to walk
'way to Bemis, where the general offices was. They was pretty mad. We
had that train chained up there for 'most a month, and at last they paid
the claim."

"Was that the railroad that offered to make you general manager?" Hilda
asked.

"Yes, provided I'd let the train go. I'm glad I didn't take it up,
though. You see, the farmers along the road who held the stock in it
made up their minds that the train had quit running for good, so they
took up the rails where it ran across their farms, and used the ties for
firewood. That's all they ever got out of their investment."

A few moments later Max came back and Bannon straightened up to go. "I
wish you'd tell Pete when you see him to-morrow," he said to the boy,
"that I won't be on the job till noon."

"Going to take a holiday?"

"Yes. Tell him I'm taking the rest cure up at a sanitarium."

At half-past eight next morning Bannon entered the outer office of R. S.
Carver, president of the Central District of the American Federation of
Labor, and seated himself on one of the long row of wood-bottomed chairs
that stood against the wall. Most of them were already occupied by
poorly dressed men who seemed also to be waiting for the president. One
man, in dilapidated, dirty finery, was leaning over the stenographer's
desk, talking about the last big strike and guessing at the chance of
there being any fun ahead in the immediate future. But the rest of them
waited in stolid, silent patience, sitting quite still in unbroken rank
along the wall, their overcoats, if they had them, buttoned tight around
their chins, though the office was stifling hot. The dirty man who was
talking to the stenographer filled a pipe with some very bad tobacco and
ostentatiously began smoking it, but not a man followed his example.

Bannon sat in that silent company for more than an hour before the great
man came. Even then there was no movement among those who sat along the
wall, save as they followed him almost furtively with their eyes. The
president never so much as glanced at one of them; for all he seemed to
see the rank of chairs might have been empty. He marched across to his
private office, and, leaving the door open behind him, sat down before
his desk. Bannon sat still a moment, waiting for those who had come
before him to