Mr. Hardy made no reply in words, but looked about him. Within the blackened area of the great shop about two hundred men were at work. The whirl of machinery was constant. The grind of steel on iron was blended with the rattle of chains and the rolling of the metal carriages in their tracks. The Genius of Railroading seemed present in the grim strength and rapidity of several machines which moved almost as if instinct with intelligence, and played with the most unyielding substances as if they were soft and pliable clay. In the midst of all the smashing of matter against matter, through the smoke and din and dust and revolution of the place, Mr. Hardy was more than usually alive this morning to the human aspect of the case. His mind easily went back to the time when he himself stood at one of these planers and did just such work as that big Norwegian was doing, only the machines were vastly better and improved now. Mr. Hardy was not ashamed of having come along through the ranks of manual labour. In fact, he always spoke with pride of the work he used to do in that very shop, and he considered himself able to run all by himself any piece of machinery in the shops. But he could not help envying these men this morning. "Why," he said, "probably not one of them but has at least seven weeks to live, and most of them seven months or years, while I-- Why should these men complain because they are not released from toil? Isn't toil sweet when there is a strong body and a loving wife and a happy home? O God!" he continued to think, "I would give all my wealth if I might change places with any one of these men, and know that I would probably have more than a week to live." Mr. Hardy walked back to his office, leaving the foreman in a condition of wondering astonishment. "Something wrong in his works, I guess," muttered Burns. Mr. Hardy sat down to his desk and wrote an order, releasing all the men who desired to attend Scoville's funeral in the afternoon. He did not have it in his power to do more, and yet he felt that this was the least he could do under the circumstances. The more he thought of Scoville's death the more he felt the cruel injustice of it. The injuries were clearly accidental; but they might have been avoided with proper care for human life. Robert Hardy was just beginning to understand the value of humanity. He worked hard at the routine of his office until noon. He did what seemed to him the most necessary part of it all with conscientious fidelity. But his mind, a good part of the time, was with the men in the shops. He could not escape the conviction that if a railroad company had the willingness to do so, it could make the surroundings of their men safer and happier without getting poorer work, or even losing any money by it. When noon sounded he went home, resolved to do whatever lay in his power to make the men feel that they were regarded as something more than machines.