As Jim Weeks had said, Thompson wouldn't fight, and Porter realized this
quite as well as Jim. The recalcitrant Vice-President played no part in
Porter's calculations except as a somewhat blundering and obstinate tool.
But on Friday morning Thompson's office boy announced Mr. Porter. Porter
stated his case clearly. It was his plan to remove Weeks and Myers by
judicial order from the Board of Directors. That would leave the
opposition a majority of the board. Then Thompson was to call a meeting
and assume control of the books. That done, the battle would be decided,
and the election a mere formality. Thompson was badly rattled, for he
hadn't a grain of sand in his composition, but in the end he conquered his
fears and agreed to play the part Porter assigned to him.

At half-past two a disjointed-looking train panted into the Harrison
Street Station, and Judge Black climbed disconsolately out of the smoker.
There was a coating of cinders on the top of his derby hat; there were
drifts of cinders in the curl of the brim; there were streaks of cinders
along the lines where his coat wrinkled; and there was one cinder in his
left eye which gave him so leery and bibulous an aspect that an old lady
who narrowly escaped colliding with him turned and looked after him in
indignation, being half minded to go back and plead with him to lead a
better life.

It was fifteen minutes later when the Judge reached Porter's office, but
before three o'clock he had signed an order enjoining James Weeks and
Johnson Myers from acting as directors of, or from interfering in any way
with, the affairs of the corporation known as the Manchester & Truesdale
Railroad Company, and from voting the nine thousand shares of stock in
that company which had been issued September 25th.