Regan was equally mad. And as he felt tenderly of his forehead, where a lump was rapidly approximating the formation of a goose egg, he grew madder still. “You won’t go out, won’t you?” he roared. “Well _I_ guess you will; and, what’s more, you’ll go out _now_--and get your time! I fire you, understand?” “You bet!’” said “King” Gilleen--and that’s all he said. He looked at the master mechanic for a minute, but didn’t _say_ anything more--just laughed and walked out of the roundhouse. Naturally enough, the story got up and down the division, and everybody talked about it. With their rough and impartial justice they put both men in the wrong, but mostly Gilleen for insubordination. The affront Gilleen had suffered was not so big and momentous, a long way from being the vital thing in their eyes that it was in his. Gilleen was just nutty on that point, that was all there was to that. Regan’s judgment had been bad and the moment he had seized for his thrust and fling was by no manner of means a psychological one; but, for all that, Gilleen had no business to strike the master mechanic. He had got what was coming to him--that was the verdict. He was out and out for good. It was pretty generally conceded that it would be a long while before he pulled a throttle on the Hill Division again. What sympathy the engineer got, for he got some, wasn’t on his own account. It was on account of his family--not the ancestral end of it, however. Six kids and a wife do not leave much change out of a paycheck even when it’s padded by overtime; six kids and a wife with no pay-check is pretty stiff running. Gilleen was too hot under the collar to give a thought to that when he marched out of the roundhouse that noon; but it wasn’t many hours, after he had put in a few to make up for the sleep he hadn’t had during the preceding weeks, that the problem was up to him for consideration with a vote for adjournment for once ruled out as not in order.