A figure emerged from the engine doors at the far end of the roundhouse and came toward him. Regan’s eyes, attracted, barely glanced in that direction, and then went down again in meditation, as he kicked a little hole in the cinders with the toe of his boot--it was only Spitzer. When he looked up again Spitzer was nearer, quite near. Spitzer had halted before him and was standing there patiently, an embarrassed flush on his cheeks, wiping his hands nervously on an exceedingly dirty piece of packing which in his abstraction, for Spitzer was plainly abstracted, he had picked up for a piece of waste. “Huh!” said Regan, staring at Spitzer’s hands, “what you trying to do? Black up for a minstrel show?” Spitzer dropped the packing as though it had been a handful of thistles, and rubbed his hands up and down the legs of his overalls. “Well?” Regan invited. Spitzer began to talk, rapidly, hurriedly--that is, his lips moved rapidly, hurriedly. Regan listened attentively and with a strained and hopeless expression, as he strove to catch a word and hence the drift of Spitzer’s remarks. “How?” he demanded, when he saw Spitzer was at an end. “Speak out, man. You won’t wake the baby up.” Spitzer began all over again. This time he did a little better. “A dollar twenty-five,” repeated the master mechanic numbly. Spitzer brightened visibly, and nodded. Regan stared, bewildered and dumfounded. Gradually, impossible, incomprehensible, incongruous as it appeared, it dawned on him that Spitzer, even Spitzer, _Spitzer_ was asking for a _raise!_ “A dollar twenty-five.” was all Regan could repeat over again, and the words came away with a gasp. Spitzer, misinterpreting the tone, his face grew rueful and full of trouble. He was appalled at his own temerity in broaching the subject in the first place, but now he had overstepped the bounds--he had asked for too much! “A dollar twenty,” he ventured, in timid compromise--Spitzer was getting a dollar fifteen. “How long you been working here?” inquired Regan, recovering a little and beginning to get a grip on himself. “Four years,” said Spitzer faintly. “Good Lord!” mumbled Regan. “Four years. A dollar twenty-five, h’m? Well, I dunno, I guess we can manage that.” And then, as a new thought suddenly struck him: “What the blazes would _you_ do with more money, h’m?” But Spitzer only grinned sheepishly as, after murmuring his thanks, he walked back and disappeared in the roundhouse. “Good Lord!” muttered Regan, looking after him. “Four years, and a dollar and a quarter, _and_ Spitzer! Good Lord!”