He drew a step nearer, his eyes still on the other’s face.... Gradually a change seemed to come over him. The bent figure straightened itself. It towered above the president of the road, filling the little room. The chieftain of some mighty Highland clan might have stood thus, defying his enemy. His lifted right hand grew tense and flung itself, and a torrent of broad Scotch poured forth. Words of fire, heard in Tomlinson’s boyhood and forgotten long since, were on his tongue. The elemental passions were afire within him. Like the slow-burning peat of his native bogs, his soul, nourishing its spark through the years, had blazed forth--a scorching torrent. The words rolled on, a mighty flood, enveloping the man before him. Scathing tongues of flame darted at him and drew back, and leaped high--to fall in fiery, stinging showers on his head. At the first words of the imprecation the president of the road had lifted his head with a little smile--almost of scorn--on his lips, as one might watch some domestic animal reverting to its ancestral rage. But as the broad Scotch rolled on--stem, implacable and sinister--the smile faded a little and the man seemed to shrivel where he stood, as if some fiery blast touched him. When he raised his head again, the look in his eyes was of cold steel. He waited a minute after the voice had ceased, then he lifted his hand quietly. “You ’ve had your say, Tomlinson. Now I ’ll say mine--You leave this office and you leave the road. You ’ll never touch brake or throttle or switch on it again. You ’re not fit--do you understand!” He moved his hand toward the door and Tomlinson went out, a tottering old man once more. For a long minute the president of the road stood staring at the closed door. The hand that had pointed to it had not trembled; but now it began subtly, as if of its own will, to move. Slowly the vibration communicated itself to the whole frame till the man threw himself into a chair, broken from head to foot. He leaned toward his desk, gasping a little. “My God!” he said under his breath, “My God!” He lifted his hand and wiped the moisture from his forehead with the dazed look of one who has come through some mighty upheaval unharmed. XIII Another week went by before John was free to go back. The day before his return he received a letter, addressed in a huge, sprawling hand: I seen him. I cursed him. Hugh Tomlinson. Simeon made no reference to the visit or the curse, and John waited, wondering a little whether it might be possible, even now, to undo the consequences of the old man’s folly.