men with a paunch have a complacent, serene
outlook on life as a compensation for the paunch--disturbed a little.
Beezer and his demands were becoming ubiquitous. Regan was getting
decidedly on edge.

"Firing," said Beezer. "Let me start in firing--there's as much in
that as in fitting, and I can get along for the little while it'll be
before you'll be down on your knees begging me to take a throttle."

"Firing, eh!" Regan finally exploded one day. "Look here, Beezer; I've
heard about enough from you. Firing, eh? There'd have been some
firing done before this that would have surprised you if you hadn't
been a family man! Get that? The trouble with you is that you don't
know what you want or what you're talking about."

"I know what I want, and I know what I'm talking about," Beezer
answered doggedly; "and I'm going to keep on putting it up to you till
you quit saying 'No.'"

"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a
few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time,
Beezer--till I'm dead."

But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's
unexplainable the way things work out sometimes!

That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from
division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide
tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan.

"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you
see Harvey?"

"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town."

"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I
guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to
you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a
dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with,
as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age."

"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the
master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old
Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's
next?"

"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put
together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in
commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a
permanent job. What do you say?"

"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!"

"H'm?" inquired Carleton.

"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beeze