"I see," said Luke; but what he saw was that his father, whom he loved too much to hurt uselessly, had, out of kindness, strained a legal definition. His father, he reflected, was not a man to abuse privilege in large matters, and would be only hurt by a refusal in the present trivial affair. Luke put the pass in the cuff of his overcoat and silently decided to pay his fare to the conductor. The elder man, big as he was, stamped his feet on the concrete pavement and complained of the chill in the April air; the younger was too happy to notice the cold. "Train’s five minutes late," remarked the Congressman as, through a cautiously unbuttoned overcoat, he drew and snapped open a heavy watch. "Is your time correct?" asked Luke. "Hasn’t varied three seconds a week in ten years," his father assured him. Neither was thinking of what was being said. The younger man was so full of the high work ahead of him that he had already forgotten his mother’s ill-concealed tears at parting; the elder, granted political favors rather because of his personal popularity and pliant good-nature than for any ability at the game of vote-keeping, possessed at least the chief virtue of the politician: he was a man of few words, and the more truly he felt the less he spoke. The "up-train" arrived (it was the "down-train" that Luke must take), and the Congressman was besieged by the newsboys, who knelt about him, striking their rolls of newspapers on the pavement the quicker to burst the wrappers in which the journals were closely confined. "_Press_, Mr. Huber?" "_North American_ or _Record_?" "_Ledger_?" The boys bobbed up, flourishing their wares. "Aw, I know what he wants," said an older lad, elbowing the rest. "Here’s yer _Inquirer_, Mr. Congressman." Luke’s father smiled: he had never outgrown his liking for homage from whatever quarter; but he bought a paper from each boy, giving each a five-cent piece and telling him to keep the change. "You might as well take the lot," he said to Luke. "You’ll want something to read on the train." He was handing all the papers to Luke, when his eyes were caught by a large headline on the first page of one of them. "Hello!" he commented, his lips immediately pursing themselves as if to whistle. As Luke took its fellows, the Congressman folded this paper with the sudden skill of the confirmed newspaper-reader, who can handle a journal in the open air as neatly as a trained yachtsman can reef a top-sail before an undesirable wind. "I see the Big Man’s been giving some more testimony to that committee of the legislature up at Albany." For the past few weeks, Luke had been too busy preparing for his bar-examinations to keep track of current events. "Who’s the Big Man?" he asked. The elder Huber raised his thick brows.