Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery didn't talk about their troubles. You'd never get the blues on their account, no matter how intimate you got with them. But everybody knew the story, of course, for everybody knows a thing like that; and everybody knew that dollars were scarce up at the MacCafferys' shanty for, though they didn't know how much old Dan sent East each year, they knew it had to be a pretty big slice of what was coming to him to make much impression on that five thousand dollars at the other end--and they wondered, naturally enough, how the MacCafferys got along at all. But the MacCafferys got along somehow, outwardly without a sign of the hurt that was deeper than a mere matter of dollars and cents, got along through the years--and Mrs. MacCaffery got a little grayer, a little more gentle and patient and sweet-faced, and old Dan's hair narrowed to a fringe like a broken tonsure above his ears, and--but there's our "clearance" now, and we're off with a clean-swept track and "rights through" into division. Dan was handling the cab end of one of the local passenger runs when things broke loose in the East--a flurry in Wall Street. But Wall Street was a long, long way from the Rockies, and, though the papers were full of it, there didn't seem to be anything intimate enough in a battle of brokers and magnates, bitter, prolonged, and to the death though it might be, to stir up any excitement or enthusiasm on the Hill Division. The Hill Division, generally speaking, had about all it could do to mind its own affairs without bothering about those of others', for the Rockies, if conquered, took their subjection with bad grace and were always in an incipient state of insurrection that kept the operating, the motive power and the maintenance-of-way departments close to the verge of nervous prostration without much let-up to speak of. But when the smoke cleared away down East, the Hill Division and Big Cloud forgot their bridge troubles and their washouts and their slides long enough to stick their tongues in their cheeks and look askance at each other; and Carleton, in his swivel chair, pulled on the amber mouthpiece of his brier and looked at Regan, who, in turn, pulled on his scraggly brown mustache and reached for his hip pocket and his plug. The system was under new control. "Who's H. Herrington Campbell when he's at home?" spluttered Regan. "Our new general manager, Tommy," Carleton told him for the second time. Regan grunted. "I ain't blind! I've read that much. Who is he--h'm? Know him?" Carleton took the pipe from his mouth--a little seriously. "It's the P. M. & K. crowd, Tommy. Makes quite an amalgamation, doesn't it--direct eastern tidewater connection--what? They're a younger lot, pretty progressive, too, and sharp as they make them."