id. "Understand that? I'm out
from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton--and what he'll have
to say won't take long--about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't
you? Well, then--what?"

It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and
wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After
that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some
of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his
reflections--which were a blank.

Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it.
When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy,
was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments--Flannagan's head
was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against
time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went
back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition,
but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might
have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated--Flannagan found
a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it
an official manila envelope from the super's office.

He opened the letter and read it--read it again while his jaws worked
and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he
tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped
upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot.

The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for
that--a curt request to present himself in the super's office,
probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started
down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan
wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything,
spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the
prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment--if only a
war of words.

Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the
despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and
everything else--not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather
imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be;
but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early
days when the road was young and in the making.

Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed
Carleton's door open with little ceremony.

"You want t