ill
bankrupt and destroy the town of Barlow if its competitor is granted
right of way or terminals. To avoid long delay in the courts Regan
himself, with the prestige of old command in this territory, has been
sent to open the way. But never a friend has he found in his old
headquarters town; the politicians whom he once ruled with a rod of iron
are in fact rejoiced to break one of their own across the head of him.
Not a loophole is left open to the P. D.

"'T is a wall of China," thinks Regan, "and what will my new directors
say of a manager who cannot persuade or bribe his old fellow citizens to
receive him with a new railroad in his hands?"

"Our new line will be the fortunes of Barlow," he has argued, but the
citizens in control laugh at him.

"The G. S. will do better by us, with new machine shops, and even build
a branch into your own territory," is the answer he has taken back to
his car from the final conference this very night.

As his first repulse the man of pull-down and trample-under has not
known how to take it, pacing his car like a madman who mistakes his own
fits for the destruction of the world. The lanterns which beckoned from
a boy at Turntable blinked now in mockery; suddenly across the yards his
eye, as dark as the stormy sky, steadied to a single spark--the beam of
Tim Cannon's lantern through the dingy window.

"'T is in the old freight house, leased to the Barlow Suburban!" he
thought aloud. "The Barlow Suburban!" And already he was into his
stormcoat and on his way to parley with the ragged boy posted like a
sentry on the highway of his destiny. So Regan discovered the only
unguarded gateway into Barlow.

Now the scheme is brewed and Tim settles down to count the gain in money
and in the interest he will make with Regan; the old building reels and
shingles whir away like bats in the gale, but he only laughs dourly, the
scrawny little breast hurting and straining with the ambition to be
mounting on bigger storms than this. By dawn he is as drunk with
scheming as ever his old grandfather with whisky, and yet his nerves do
not tremble as he goes about the business of the day, kicking Charley to
his feet and hitching with a scowl to the limekiln crew.

With deliberation he drives into the sheeted rain, and his look into the
gulch at the bottom of the last hill, where the wreck will presently
lie, is calculating and steady. In action Tim does honor to himself and
to the great men who are of