"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent--not a thing on earth to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery. And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way." "To blame?" repeated Carleton. "I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?" Carleton shook his head. "I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got settled in the saddle." Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache. "Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd put one over on the pup--I would that! There ain't any birth register that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was fifty I'd take his word for it." "Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his job." "No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic, belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him. And--and--oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking, Carleton." Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and down the room, spoke again: "It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything--there ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?" Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of his chair. "Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it. "I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's heart--Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had--I'd hate to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to, h'm?" And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day after pay day.