“So here ye arre at last,” he said with a grin.

“Yes,” I laughed.

“Well, ye’re jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice.”

“Certainly,” I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy fingers.  Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.

“I waant ye to go to Woodlawn,” he continued, “an’ look after some bolts that arre up there—­there’s a keg av thim—­an’ sign the bill fer thim, an’ ship thim down to me.  An’ thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice an’ take thim this o.k.”  Here again he fished around and produced another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick of wood or a nail or a bolt.  The company demanded these of all foremen, in order to keep its records straight.  Its accounting department was useless without them.  At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the “nonsinse av it,” and the “onraisonableness” of demanding o.k.s for everything.  “Ye’d think some one was goin’ to sthale thim from thim,” he declared irritably and defiantly.

I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred and that he had been “called down,” or “jacked up” about it, as the railroad men expressed it.  He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow.  At the same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who would relieve him of this damnable “nonsinse,” or so he hoped.  He was not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all this.  In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here.

He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed.

“Tell him that I’ll sign fer thim when I get thim, an’ not before,” he declared.

I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be.  It was just the Irish of it.  I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I went down to the “ahffice” and reported.  There I found the chief clerk, a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to make up his reports.  Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them.  He wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed.