Airily, Mr. Brassfield preceded his clerk down the stairway, and out into the street. There, something in the air--the balm of advancing spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun; or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the landscape--apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But however bewildered Florian's mentality might become at such things, it was different with Brassfield. The plane of consciousness in which he had so long moved, with a memory running back five years and there ending in a blank wall of nescience, had made him cunning and shifty--necessarily so. The struggle for existence had had its inevitable effect--the faculty paralyzed had been compensated for by the development of others. So he was not at all at a loss now, when this little hiatus in time struck on his mind in the form of a suspicion. He turned to Alderson with a smile. "Do you remember what date this is, my boy?" he inquired. Alderson named the date. Brassfield nodded, as if he were pleased to find Alderson correct in his exercises. "Of course you know what we've arranged for to-day, don't you?" he went on. "The deferred annual meeting of the Construction Company?" asked Alderson. "If that's it, it's all attended to. I took the proxies to Mr. Smith yesterday." "Good!" was Brassfield's hearty response. "You'll do for an animated 'office tickler' if you continue to improve. You used to forget all these things." They had now come to a certain turning, down which Brassfield gazed, to a place where the highway was torn up and excavated. A center line of bowed backs, fringed by flying dirt. Indicated that the work was still in progress. "You may go on to the office," said Brassfield, "and I'll be up immediately. I'm going down to see Barney Conlon a moment." He walked down among the men, nodding to the busy ones, and stopping for a handshake or a joke with others. "Hello, Barney," he shouted to the man who seemed to be in charge. "How long are you going to keep people jumping sideways to prevent themselves from being buried alive? You old Fenian!" Conlon looked at him for a moment with an air of distinct disfavor. "Look out there!" he shouted to a teamster who was unloading pipe. "D'ye want to kill the min in the trinch? Ah, is thot you, Mr. Brassfield?" "What's left of me," replied Brassfield, quickly aware of the coolness of the reception--the politician's sensitiveness to danger. "By the way, Conlon, can't you come up to the office soon? I've got some specifications I want you to see. Pipe-line. Can you do that sort of work?" "Do it!" gushed Conlon, thawing. "Do it! Ah, Mr. Brassfield, d'ye ask me thot, whin ye mind 'twas me thot done the Rogers job!"