his chair.

And from that day Lane knew that the Colonel never lost sight of him. When
his chance came, as in time it did come through one of the mutations of the
great corporation, he suspected that the old hardware merchant, who was a
close friend of the chief men in the road, had spoken the needed word to
lift the clerk out of the rut. At any rate the Colonel had not forgotten
the son of Tyringham Lane, and the young man had often been to the
generous, ugly Victorian house,--built when the hardware business made its
first success.

Nevertheless, when, three years later John Lane made another afternoon
visit to that dingy office in the Parrott and Price establishment, his
hands trembed nervously as he sat waiting while the Colonel scrawled his
signature to several papers.

"Well, John!" the old man remarked finally, shoving the papers towards the
waiting stenographer. "How's railroadin' these days?"

"All right," Lane answered buoyantly. "They have transferred me to the
Indiana division, headquarters at Torso--superintendent of the Torso and
Toledo."

"Indeed! But you'll be back here some day, eh?"

"I hope so!"

"That's good!" The Colonel smiled sympathetically, as he always did when he
contemplated energetic youth, climbing the long ladder with a firm grip on
each rung.