atch chain. "Come on and
look the natives over!"

Regan, who had been a little hazy on the etiquette of chewing in select
company, reached openly for his plug--and kind of squinted over it
non-committingly, as he bit in, at H. Herrington Campbell, who stood
beside him. Carleton had sized the new general manager up pretty
well--cold as a snow man--and he looked it. H. Herrington Campbell was
a spare-built man, with sharp, quick, black eyes, a face like a hawk,
and lips so thin you wouldn't know he had any if one corner of his
mouth hadn't been pried kind of open, so to speak, with the stub of a
cigar.

"Go ahead and amuse yourselves, boys." H. Herrington Campbell talked
out of the corner of his mouth where the cigar was. "We pull out at
twelve-thirty sharp." Then to Regan, curtly: "We'll look the equipment
and shops over, Mr. Regan."

"Yes--sure," agreed Regan, without much enthusiasm, and led the way
across the tracks toward the roundhouse as a starting point for the
inspection tour.

The whole blamed thing was different from the way Regan had figured it
out in his mind beforehand; but Regan set out to make himself
agreeable--and H. Herrington Campbell listened. H. Herrington Campbell
was the greatest listener Regan had ever met, and Regan froze--and then
Regan thawed out again, but not on account of H. Herrington Campbell.
Regan might have an unresponsive audience, but then Regan didn't
require an audience at all to warm him up when it came to his
roundhouse, and his big mountain racers, and the shops he lay awake at
night planning and thinking about. Here and there, H. Herrington
Campbell shot out a question, crisp, incisive, unexpected, and lapsed
into silence again--that was all.

They inspected everything, everything there was to inspect; but when
they got through Regan had about as good an idea of what impression it
had made on H. Herrington Campbell as he had when he started out, which
is to say none at all. The new general manager just listened. Regan
had done all the talking.

Not that H. Herrington Campbell sized up as a misfit, not by any means,
far from it! Regan didn't make that mistake for a minute. He didn't
need to be told that the other knew railroading from the ground up, he
could feel it; but he didn't need to be told, either, that the other
was more a high-geared efficiency machine than he was a man, he could
feel that, too.

One word of praise Regan wanted, not for himself, but