"What is your name?" "J-J-James Upton." "Where from?" Jim told him. "Whose son are you?" "C-C-C-Captain J-J-James Upton's." "What! You don't look much like him!" Jim shuffled one foot. One corner of his mouth twitched up curiously. It might have been a smile. He looked straight at the blank wall before him. "You are not much like your mother either--I used to know her as a girl. How's that?" Jim shuffled the other foot a little. "R-r-run to seed, I reckon." The President was a farmer--prided himself on it. The reply pleased him. He touched a bell. A clerk entered. "Ask Mr. Wake to come here." "Can you carry a barrel of flour?" he asked Jim. "I-I'll get it there," said Jim. He leaned a little forward. His eyes opened. "Or a sack of salt? They are right heavy." "I-I-I'll get it there," said Jim. His form straightened. Mr. Wake appeared. "Write Mr. Day to give this man a place as brakeman." "Yes, sir. Come this way." This to Jim. Jim electrified them all by suddenly bursting out crying. The tension had given way. He walked up to the wall and leaned his head against it with his face on his arm, shaking from head to foot, sobbing aloud. "Thank you, I--I'm ever so much obliged to you," he sobbed. The President rose and walked rapidly about the room. Suddenly Jim turned and, with his arm over his eyes, held out his hand to the President. "Good-by." Then he went out. There was a curious smile on the faces of the Directors as the door closed. "Well, I never saw anything like that before," said one of them. The President said nothing. "Run to seed," quoted the oldest of the Directors, "rather good expression!" "Damned good seed, gentlemen," said the President, a little shortly. "Duval and Upton.--That fellow's father was in my command. Died at Gettysburg. He'd fight hell." Jim got a place--brakeman on a freight-train. That night Jim wrote a letter home. You'd have thought he had been elected President. It was a hard life: harder than most. The work was hard; the fare was hard; the life was hard. Standing on top of rattling cars as they rushed along in the night around curves, over bridges, through tunnels, with the rain and snow pelting in your face, and the tops as slippery as ice. There was excitement about it, too: a sense of risk and danger. Jim did not mind it much. He thought of his mother and Kitty. There was a freemasonry among the men. All knew each other; hated or liked each other; nothing negative about it.