Its sky was low and ominous, charged with a sense of psychic stress. I felt two conditions of conflict, one chronic and one acute. The feeling of there being something acute was suddenly deepened when the old mother spoke for the first and only time. Her voice was clear, precise and commanded undivided attention. The question she asked gave me a queer start. “What is the price of Great Midwestern to-day?” “Eight,” said Galt, amid profound silence. That was all. Yet it was as if a spark had passed through inflammable gas. The same feeling was deepened further by another incident. “Coxey,” said Galt, addressing me rhetorically, “what one thing has impressed you most in Wall Street?” “The unbelief of people in themselves, in each other and in what they are doing,” I replied. “What’s that? Say it again.” I said it again, whereat he burst forth with shrill, discordant, exulting sounds, beating the china with a spoon and making for one person an incredible uproar. At the same time he looked about him with a high air, especially at his wife, whose expression was perfectly blank. Natalie smiled grimly. The old mother was oblivious. “I don’t see anything in that,” I said, when the racket subsided. “There is, though,” he said. “You didn’t mean to do it but you hit ’em in the eye that time,--square in the eye. Wow!” He was very agreeably excited and got up from the table. “Come on,” he said, “we’ll talk in my room.” “I’ll send your coffee up,” Mrs. Galt called after us, as he bore me off. “This is where I live and play,” he said, applying a latch-key to a door at the top of the stairway. He went in first to get the light on, saying: “I don’t let anybody in here but Natalie. She can dust it up without touching anything.” The room was a workshop in that state of involved disorder, tools all scattered about, which is sign and measure of the craftsman’s engrossment. There was an enormous table piled high at both ends with papers, briefs, maps, charts, blue prints, files, pamphlets and stuffed envelopes. Books were everywhere,--on the table, on the chairs, on the floor, many of them open, faces up and faces down, straddled one upon another leap-frog fashion, arranged in series with weights to hold them flat, books sprawling, leaning, prone. Poor’s Manual of Railway Statistics, the Financial Chronicle, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Economics of Railroad Construction, History of the Erie Railroad, the Yardmaster’s Assistant,--such were the titles. Against the right wall to a height of six feet were book shelves filled with all the contemporary financial and commercial periodicals in bound volumes, almanacs, endless books of statistical reference and the annual reports of various railway corporations, running back for many years. On top of the shelves was the only decorative thing in the room,--a beautiful working model of a locomotive, perfect in every intricate part, mounted in brass and set upon a nickel plated section of railway.