"He's wit' himself, as a master-mechanic shu'd be," said Callahan. "So's M'Tosh. But nayther wan n'r t'other av thim'll take a thrain out whin the strike's on. They're both Loring min." At the mention of Loring's name Griggs looked up from the stick he was whittling. "No prospects o' the Boston folks getting the road back again, I reckon," he remarked tentatively. "You should read dose _Arkoos_ newsbapers: den you should know somet'ings alretty, ain'd it?" said Tischer. Brodrick laughed. "If you see it in the papers, it's so," he quoted. "What the _Argus_ doesn't say would make a 'nough sight bigger book than what it does. But I've been kind o' watchin' that man Kent. He's been hot after the major, right from the jump. You rec'lect what he said in them Civic League talks o' his: said these politicians had stole the road, hide, hair an' horns." "I'm onto him," said Callahan. "'Tis a bird he is. Oleson was telling me. The Scandehoovian was thryin' to get him down to Gaston the day they ray-ceivered us. Jarl says he wint a mile a minut', an' the little man never turned a hair." "Is he here yet; or did he go back to God's country?" asked Engineer Scott, leaning from the cab window of the 1031. "He's here; and so is Mr. Loring. They're stopping at the Clarendon," said Brodrick. "Then they haven't quit," drawled Griggs; adding: "I wonder if they have a ghost of a show against the politicals?" "Has annybody been to see 'em?" asked Callahan. "There's a notion for you, Scott," said Brodrick. Scott was the presiding officer in the B. of L.E. local. "Get up a committee from the Federative to go and ask Mr. Loring if there's any use in our tryin' to hold on." The wiper was killing time at a window which commanded a view of the upper yards, with the Union Passenger Station at the end of the three-mile vista. Being a late comer in the field, the Trans-Western had scanty track rights in the upper yard; its local headquarters were in the shops suburb, where the two division main lines proper began and ended, diverging, the one to the eastward and the other to the west. "Holy smut!" said the wiper. "See Dicky Dixon comin' out with the Flyer! How's that for ten miles an hour in the city limits?" It was a foot-note commentary on the way the service was going to pieces. Halkett, the "political" general superintendent, had called Dixon on the carpet for not making time with his train. "If you're afraid to run, say so, and we'll get a man that isn't," Halkett had said; and here was Dixon coming down a borrowed track in a busy yard at the speed which presupposes a ninety-pound rail and nothing in the way. The conclave had gathered at the wiper's window. "The dum fool!" said Brodrick. "If anything gets in front of him----"