As a matter of fact the express companies prefer to maintain offices wherever it is at all possible. The bonanza offices for the railroad agents are few and far between and when the railroad begins to find them it is apt to part. So Blinks can consider himself lucky that his commissions do not run over fifty dollars a month. That means that the express company will not attempt anything as suicidal as establishing its own office in Brier Hill and his own modest perquisite is not apt to be interrupted. His is routine work and intricate work. He writes enough letters in a week to do credit to a respectable correspondence school and he makes enough reports in seven days to run three businesses. His incoming mail arrives like a flood. There are tariffs, bulletins, more tariffs, instructions, more tariffs, suggestions--and still more tariffs. The tariffs, both freight and passenger, are fairly encyclopedic in dimensions and the folks down at headquarters fondly imagine that he has memorized them. At least that seems to be their assumption if Blinks can judge from their letters. Every department of the road requests information of him, and gets it. And when he is done with the railroad he realizes that he is violating biblical injunction and serving two masters, at least. For the express company is fairly prolific with its own tariffs and other literature. And the telegraph company has many things also to say to Blinks there in the old brick depot. [Illustration: THE STATION AGENT He is the human tentacle of the railroad; the flesh-and-blood factor by which it keeps in touch with many, many thousands of patrons.] Yet the wonder of it is that Blinks endures it all--not only endures but actually thrives under it. In a single hour while you are sitting in his dingy, homy little office just back of the ticket cage, you can see the press of work upon him. He has just finished a four-page report to the legal department, explaining the likelihood of the road's being able to stave off that demand for an overhead crossing just back of the town; there is a letter on his desk from the general freight agent asking him for a "picture" of the business at Brier Hill, which means a careful analysis of its industries and trade--not an easy job of itself. There is an express package of $25,000 in gold destined to a local bank, over in the corner of the ticket cage. Blinks keeps a bit of watchfulness for that "value package" down in the corner of his mind while a thousand things press in upon it. Number Four is almost within hearing when a young man and his wife appear at the window, baggage in hand, and demand a ticket via Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Sedalia to Muskogee. The young ticket clerk tears madly through a few dozen tariffs, scratches his head blankly--and Blinks has to jump into the breach. In thirty seconds he has the right tariff.