“The railroad had one train; there was an engine and three box cars and a couple of flats and a combination—­that’s baggage and passenger.  It made the round trip from Bemis every day, fifty-two miles over all, and considering the roadbed and the engine, that was a good day’s work.

“Well, that train was worth four hundred and thirty dollars all right enough, if they could have got their hands on it, but the engineer was such a peppery chap that nobody ever wanted to bother him.  But I just bided my time, and one hot day after watering up the engine him and the conductor went off to get a drink.  I had a few lengths of log chain handy, and some laborers with picks and shovels, and we made a neat, clean little job of it.  Then I climbed up into the cab.  When the engineer came back and wanted to know what I was doing there, I told him we’d attached his train.  ‘Don’t you try to serve no papers on me,’ he sung out, ’or I’ll split your head.’  ‘There’s no papers about this job,’ said I.  ’We’ve attached it to the track.’  At that he dropped the fire shovel and pulled open the throttle.  The drivers spun around all right, but the train never moved an inch.

“He calmed right down after that and said he hadn’t four hundred and thirty dollars with him, but if I’d let the train go, he’d pay me in a week.  I couldn’t quite do that, so him and the conductor had to walk ’way to Bemis, where the general offices was.  They was pretty mad.  We had that train chained up there for ’most a month, and at last they paid the claim.”

“Was that the railroad that offered to make you general manager?” Hilda asked.

“Yes, provided I’d let the train go.  I’m glad I didn’t take it up, though.  You see, the farmers along the road who held the stock in it made up their minds that the train had quit running for good, so they took up the rails where it ran across their farms, and used the ties for firewood.  That’s all they ever got out of their investment.”

A few moments later Max came back and Bannon straightened up to go.  “I wish you’d tell Pete when you see him tomorrow,” he said to the boy, “that I won’t be on the job till noon.”

“Going to take a holiday?”

“Yes.  Tell him I’m taking the rest cure up at a sanitarium.”

At half-past eight next morning Bannon entered the outer office of R. S. Carver, president of the Central District of the American Federation of Labor, and seated himself on one of the long row of wood-bottomed chairs that stood against the wall.  Most of them were already occupied by poorly dressed men who seemed also to be waiting for the president.  One man, in dilapidated, dirty finery, was leaning over the stenographer’s desk, talking about the last big strike and guessing at the chance of there being any fun ahead in the immediate future.  But the rest of them waited in stolid, silent patience, sitting quite still in unbroken rank along the wall, their overcoats, if they had them, buttoned tight around their chins, though the office was stifling hot.  The dirty man who was talking to the stenographer filled a pipe with some very bad tobacco and ostentatiously began smoking it, but not a man followed his example.