The Interstate Commerce Law, as we have already seen, is a pretty rigid thing and lest a perfectly virtuous railroad should be accused of making purposeful "mistakes" in quoting the wrong rate, it insists that the agent himself shall pay the difference when he fails to charge the patron the fully established rate for either passenger or freight transportation. In fact it does more. It demands that the agent shall seek out the patron and make him pay the dollars and cents of the error, which is rather nice in theory but difficult in execution. The average citizen does not live in any great fear of the Interstate Commerce Law. Blinks, being a practical sort of railroader, is willing to tell you of the line as it works today--of the problems and the perplexities that constantly confront him. And occasionally he gives thought to his rival, whose little depot is on the far side of the village. "Now Fremont is up against it," he tells you confidentially. "His road is different from ours. We have built up a pretty good reputation for our service. My job is a man's job but at least I don't have to apologize for our road. Fremont does. His road is rotten and he knows it. He knows when he sells a man a ticket through to California or even down to New York that the train is going to be a poor one, made up of old equipment, probably late, and certainly overcrowded. And if it's a shipper Fremont knows that there is a good chance that his car is going to get caught in some one of their inadequate yards and perhaps be held a week on a back siding. "It keeps Fremont guessing. His business is not more than half of mine and he has to work three times as hard to get it. He catches it from every corner and starves along on a bare eighty dollars a month. And they are not even decent enough to give him anything like this." He delves into an inner pocket and pulls out a leather pass wallet. It is a "system annual"--a magic card which permits his wife or himself to travel over all the main lines and side lines of the big road, at their will. He gives it a genuine look of affection before he replaces it. "When a man's been fifteen years in the station service of our road, he gets one of these for himself; at twenty-five they make it include his wife and dependent members of his family--which is quite as far as the law allows." Blinks laughs.