Things looked pretty good. The only thing that bothered me was that we hadn't started the big job yet. * * * * * The next morning I saw a new face at the keyboard of one of our linecasting machines. I had long ago adopted democracy as a good policy, so now I stopped to introduce myself. "I'm J. J. Shane, the manager." His hands, with incredibly long fingers, had been just flowing over the keyboard--that is the only way to describe it--with the long fingers moving down an inch or so whenever they were above the right key, and doing it all so smoothly it was hard to realize he was actually composing lines. His hands seemed to flow back and forth like the tide, and yet he was setting twenty ems eight-point and keeping the machine hung. Here, I thought right away, was a valuable man. This fellow could be a pace-setter if we would handle him right. But when I spoke to him and held out my hand, he looked at me for a second without missing a stroke, then his hands dropped away from the keyboard and he started to unfold himself from the chair. "You don't need to get up," I said hastily. "I don't want to take up any of your time." But he finished unfolding himself and stood up. "I have plenty of time," he said. He was over seven feet tall, and that meant a foot and a half over me--and very thin. His clothes looked pretty weatherbeaten, as if maybe he'd been caught in a few rainstorms. "Jones," said his booming voice from somewhere far above me. "High-Pockets Jones, sometimes known as the Dean of Barn-stormers." I leaned back to look up at him. His face was as weatherbeaten as his clothes. I recognized the reddish tan that comes from facing a hot wind on the top of a moving boxcar. He was obviously a bum, and probably wouldn't be with us long, but there was something almost of nobility in his eyes--calmness, gentleness, or perhaps just the knowledge of having been in many, many situations and the experience gained from getting out of them, and the self-assurance that he would always be able to get out of any situation. I reached up to shake hands. "Yes, I've heard of you," I said. "You're sort of a throwback to the days when they needed barnstormers to correct bad working-conditions, aren't you?" He chose to pass that remark, "I've heard of you, too," he said, that last word sounding like the low string on a bull fiddle. I laughed quickly but efficiently--shortly, I believe they call it. "Nothing good, I hope." High-Pockets Jones paused a moment before he answered: "Not bad, until lately." It took me a moment or two to realize what he had said. I bent back to look at his face. He was quite sober about it. "Okay," I said hastily. "I don't want to keep you from your work." I worried a little about High-Pockets. I had heard a lot about him; he was a sort of mystery man in the printing business, going from place to place, wherever printers felt they were having trouble, and trying to straighten things out.