"'Tis what ye get f'r yer impidunce, an' f'r layin' tongue to ould man
Durgan, ye scut. 'Tis none av his doin's--the dhirty oil an' the chape
waste an' the jacket lamps. It's ay-conomy, me son; an' the other name f'r
that is a rayceiver."

"Is Durgan with us?" asked Brodrick.

"He's wit' himself, as a master-mechanic shu'd be," said Callahan. "So's
M'Tosh. But nayther wan n'r t'other av thim'll take a thrain out whin the
strike's on. They're both Loring min."

At the mention of Loring's name Griggs looked up from the stick he was
whittling.

"No prospects o' the Boston folks getting the road back again, I reckon,"
he remarked tentatively.

"You should read dose _Arkoos_ newsbapers: den you should know somet'ings
alretty, ain'd it?" said Tischer.

Brodrick laughed.

"If you see it in the papers, it's so," he quoted. "What the _Argus_
doesn't say would make a 'nough sight bigger book than what it does. But
I've been kind o' watchin' that man Kent. He's been hot after the major,
right from the jump. You rec'lect what he said in them Civic League talks
o' his: said these politicians had stole the road, hide, hair an' horns."

"I'm onto him," said Callahan. "'Tis a bird he is. Oleson was telling me.
The Scandehoovian was thryin' to get him down to Gaston the day they
ray-ceivered us. Jarl says he wint a mile a minut', an' the little man
never turned a hair."

"Is he here yet; or did he go back to God's country?" asked Engineer
Scott, leaning from the cab window of the 1031.

"He's here; and so is Mr. Loring. They're stopping at the Clarendon," said
Brodrick.

"Then they haven't quit," drawled Griggs; adding: "I wonder if they have a
ghost of a show against the politicals?"

"Has annybody been to see 'em?" asked Callahan.

"There's a notion for you, Scott," said Brodrick. Scott was the presiding
officer in the B. of L.E. local. "Get up a committee from the Federative
to go and ask Mr. Loring if there's any use in our tryin' to hold on."

The wiper was killing time at a window which commanded a view of the upper
yards, with the Union Passenger Station at the end of the three-mile
vista. Being a late comer in the field, the Trans-Western had scanty track
rights in the upper yard; its local headquarters were in the shops suburb,
where the two division main lines proper began and ended, diverging, the
one to the eastward and the other to the west.

"Holy smut!" said the wiper. "See Dicky Dixon comin' out with th