look.
"Run him off the line?"

"I don't know," Tom answered slowly. "Ransom is trying hard to earn a
living, you know."

Harry snorted. That sort of estimation of Ransom, even as a joke, was a
little too much for him.

"Mighty hot day, Reade," called Ransom, as he reined in near the young
engineers.

"Yes," said Tom slowly. "If I were enjoying myself beside a bottle of
cold soda on the Mansion House porch I don't believe I'd have the energy
to call for a horse and ride all the way out here in the heat."

"Am I intruding?" demanded Ransom, with a swift, keen glance at the
young chief engineer.

"Oh, no, indeed!" came Tom's response. "You're as welcome as the flowers
in spring."

"Thank you. It's a fine job you're doing out here."

"Now it's my turn to extend my thanks to you," Tom drawled. "Your praise
is all the more appreciated as coming from a competitor."

"A competitor!" asked Ransom quickly, and with a half scowl. "I'm not an
engineer."

"Your people are ranked as pretty fair engineers," Reade rejoined.

"My people? What do you mean, Reade? There isn't an engineer in our
family."

"No; but the Colthwaite Company employs a good many engineers," Tom
suggested.

"Colthwaite?" repeated Ransom, now on his guard. "I have nothing to do
with that concern."

"No?" asked Tom, as though greatly astonished. "Why, that's strange."

"Why is it strange?"

"Why," Tom Reade rejoined amiably, "everyone connected with the A. G.
& N. M. who knows anything at all about you credits you with being a
member of the Colthwaite Company's gloom department."

"Gloom department?" gasped Ransom, with a wholly innocent-looking face.
"Oh, all right. I'll bite. What is a gloom department, anyway?"

"It's a comparatively recent piece of business apparatus," smiled Tom.
"It is employed by big corporations as a club with which to hit smaller
crowds that want some of the business of life. The gloom department
might be called the bureau of knocking, or the hit-in-the-neck shift."

"Is that what you accuse me of doing for the Colthwaite Company?" asked
Fred Ransom, his scowl deepening.

"Oh, the accusation isn't all mine," Tom assured him unconcernedly.
"Some of it belongs elsewhere."

"Your suspicions are utterly unwarranted," retorted Ransom, choking
slightly.

"It's a lot of comfort to hear you say so," Tom rejoined, as smilingly
as ever.

"You're on the wrong track this time, anyway," Ransom asserted boldly.
"Still,