"Hampstead," he declared with an air of grave reluctance, "I guess I’ll have to lose you, after all." "What, sir," gasped John, guilty terror shaking him somewhere inside. At the change in John’s face, Mitchell threw back his head and laughed; one of those huge, hearty, bellowing laughs at his own humor, from which he extracted so much enjoyment. "Yes," he specified, "I am going to put you in the rate department. You have the making of a great railroad man in you. What you need now is the fundamentals. That’s where you get ’em. Your brains are coming out, John. I always thought you had ’em,—but it certainly took you a long time to get any of them into the show window." "It was seven years before you let me get to the window at all," suggested John, meaning to be a little bit vengeful. "Nobody’s fault but yours, my boy," said the G.F.A. brusquely, over his shoulder. "By the way," he remarked, turning back again, "you aren’t afraid of people any more, either." John flushed with pleasure. This was really the most desirable compliment Mitchell could bestow. "I think I am getting a little more confidence in myself," the big man confessed, glowing modestly. This was what three months of Kenton and "old Delsarte", as the actor called the great French apostle of intelligible anatomy, had done for John. But Kenton and "old Delsarte" were doing something else to John that was vastly more serious, but of which Robert Mitchell received no hint until nearly a year later, when the knowledge came to him suddenly with a shock that jarred and almost disconcerted him. It was somewhere about noon of a day in February, and he had just touched the button for John Hampstead, rate clerk. Instead of John, Heitmuller answered the summons, laughing softly. Now in the rate department John had made an amazing success. In six months gray-headed clerks were seeking his opinions earnestly. At the present moment he was in charge of all rates west of Ogden, Albuquerque, and El Paso, and half the department took orders from him. "John’s away at rehearsal," explained Heitmuller, still chuckling. "At rehearsal?" "Yes,—he’s going to play Ursus, the giant, in _Quo Vadis_, with Mowrey’s Stock Company at the Burbank next week." "The hell!" ejaculated the General Freight Agent, while a look of blank astonishment came upon his usually placid features. "When did that bug bite him?" "I can’t tell yet whether it’s a bite or only an itch," grinned Heitmuller. "For a while he was reciting at smokers and parties and things, and then I heard he was teaching elocution at home nights. Now he’s got a small dramatic company and goes out around giving one-act plays and scenes from Shakespeare. Pretty good, too, they say!" "Well, I be damned," Mitchell commented, when Heitmuller had finished. "He’s only away from eleven-thirty to one-thirty," explained Heitmuller. "He was so anxious and does so much more work than any two men that I couldn’t refuse him."