Gridley, clad like a gentleman, and tilting comfortably in his chair as
he smoked a cigar that neither love nor money could have bought in
Angels, was jocosely sarcastic. Hallock, shirt-sleeved, unkempt, and
with the permanent frown deepening the furrow between his eyes, neither
tilted nor smoked.

"They tell me you have missed the step up again, Hallock," said the
smoker lazily, when the purely technical matter that had brought him to
Hallock's office had been settled.

"Who tells you?" demanded the other; and a listener, knowing neither,
would have remarked the curious similarity of the grating note in both
voices as infallibly as a student of human nature would have contrasted
the two men in every other personal characteristic.

"I don't remember," said Gridley, good-naturedly refusing to commit his
informant, "but it's on the wires. Vice-President Ford is in Copah, and
the new superintendent is with him."

Hallock leaned forward in his chair.

"Who is the new man?" he asked.

"Nobody seems to know him by name. But he is a friend of Ford's all
right. That is how he gets the job."

Hallock took a plug of black tobacco from his pocket, and cut a small
sliver from it for a chew. It was his one concession to appetite, and he
made it grudgingly.