the shops. A big, bearded man with a soft hat pulled over his eyes was
directing the make-up of a train on the repair track, and the yard
engine was pulling an enormous crane down from its spur beyond the
coal-chutes. Around the man in the soft hat the wrecking-crew was
gathering: shopmen for the greater part, as a crew of a master
mechanic's choosing would be.

As the event proved, there was little time for the doing of the
preliminary work which Lidgerwood had meant to do. In the midst of the
letter-sorting, McCloskey put his head in at the door of the private
office.

"We're ready when you are, Mr. Lidgerwood," he interrupted; and with a
few hurried directions to Hallock, Lidgerwood joined the trainmaster on
the Crow's Nest platform. The train was backing up to get its
clear-track orders, and on the tool-car platform stood the big man whom
Lidgerwood had already identified presumptively as Gridley.

McCloskey would have introduced the new superintendent when the train
paused for the signal from the despatcher's window, but Gridley did not
wait for the formalities.

"Come aboard, Mr. Lidgerwood," he called, genially. "It's too bad we
have to give you a sweat-box welcome. If there are any of Seventy-one's
crew left alive, you ought to give them thirty days for calling you out
before you could shake hands with yourself."

Being by nature deliberate in forming friendships, and proportionally
tenacious of them when they were formed, Lidgerwood's impulse was to
hold all men at arm's length until he was reasonably assured of