As the pantomime reconstructed itself in reflection it assumed a comic aspect. No, it couldn’t have been serious. I was almost persuaded it had been a bit of undignified acting, an absurd though harmless way of working off a fit of temper, when I recalled that look and shuddered again. Once before I had seen that expression in the eyes of a malevolent hunchback. It was the look of a giant tragically trapped in a puny body. Galt was a small man, weighing less than one hundred pounds, with a fretful, nagging body. Before lunch the president called me on the G. M.’s private telegraph wire. He stood at the key in the Chicago office and I stood at the key in the New York office, and we conversed through the operators without written messages. Was everything all right? he asked me. Yes, everything was all right. There was nothing urgent? he asked. No, there was nothing urgent, I said. Then, as if he had but chanced to think of it, he said: “I forgot to tell you. It’s all right for Mr. Galt to have the earnings.” His anxiety to seem casual about it betrayed the fact that he had called me expressly to say that Galt should have the earnings; and there was no doubt in my thoughts that Galt since leaving me had been in communication with my chief by telegraph. What an amazing to-do! If my deductions were true, then I might expect to be presently favored with another visit. So I was. He came in about 2 o’clock and sat down at the end of my desk without speaking. I did not speak either, but handed him the statement of earnings. He crumpled the paper in his hand and dropped it in the waste basket. I was sure he hadn’t looked at it. “Coxey,” he said, “promise never again to laugh at me like that.... We’ve got a long way to go ... up and down grade ... but promise whatever happens never to do that again.” Somehow I was not surprised. For a little time we sat looking at each other. “All right,” I said, holding out my hand to him. It was an irrational experience. We shook hands in the veiled, mysterious manner of boys sealing a life-time compact for high adventure, no more words either necessary or feasible. But with Harbinger some further conversation seemed appropriate. So later I said to him. “Why are you so afraid of Galt?” “You do ask some very extraordinary questions?” “I have a right to ask this one,” I said, “seeing that you put it upon me to refuse him the earnings. You were afraid to refuse him. Isn’t that why you gave the figures to me?” “You will have to think what you like of my motives,” he said, with rather fine dignity, though at the same time turning red. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t learn yours as we’ve had to learn ours,” he added. “My what?” “That’s all,” he said, twirling about in his swivel chair and avoiding my regard. “Why do you dislike him?”