“Then I am tellin’ you-all right now there’s goin’ to be a heap o’ trouble,” drawled “Pike County” Griggs, the oldest engineer on the line.  “The shopmen are b’ilin’; and if the major puts on that blanket cut in wages he’s talkin’ about——­”

“’If’,” broke in Callahan, with fine scorn. “’Tis slaping on yer injuries ye are, Misther Griggs.  The notice is out; ’twas posted in the shops this day.”

“Then that settles it,” said Griggs, gloomily.  “When does it take hold?”

“The first day av the month to come.  An’ they’re telling me it catches everybody, down to the missinger b’ys in the of’ces.”

Griggs got upon his feet, yawning and stretching before he dropped back into his corner of the wooden settle.

“You lissen at me:  if that’s the fact, I’m tellin’ you-all that every wheel on this blame’, hoodooed railroad is goin’ to stop turnin’ at twelve o’clock on the night before that notice takes hold.”

An oil-begrimed wiper crawled from under the 1031, spat at the dope-bucket and flung his bunch of waste therein.

“Gur-r-r!  Let ’em stop,” he rasped.  “The dope’s bad, and the waste’s bad; and the old man has cut out the ’lectrics and put us back on them,” kicking a small jacket lamp to the bottom of an empty stall.  “Give ’s a chaw o’ yer smokin’ plug, Mr. Callahan,” and he held out his hand.

Callahan emptied the hot ashes from his black pipe into the open palm.

“‘Tis what ye get f’r yer impidunce, an’ f’r layin’ tongue to ould man Durgan, ye scut.  ‘Tis none av his doin’s—­the dhirty oil an’ the chape waste an’ the jacket lamps.  It’s ay-conomy, me son; an’ the other name f’r that is a rayceiver.”

“Is Durgan with us?” asked Brodrick.

“He’s wit’ himself, as a master-mechanic shu’d be,” said Callahan.  “So’s M’Tosh.  But nayther wan n’r t’other av thim’ll take a thrain out whin the strike’s on.  They’re both Loring min.”

At the mention of Loring’s name Griggs looked up from the stick he was whittling.

“No prospects o’ the Boston folks getting the road back again, I reckon,” he remarked tentatively.

“You should read dose Arkoos newsbapers:  den you should know somet’ings alretty, ain’d it?” said Tischer.

Brodrick laughed.

“If you see it in the papers, it’s so,” he quoted.  “What the Argus doesn’t say would make a ’nough sight bigger book than what it does.  But I’ve been kind o’ watchin’ that man Kent.  He’s been hot after the major, right from the jump.  You rec’lect what he said in them Civic League talks o’ his:  said these politicians had stole the road, hide, hair an’ horns.”

“I’m onto him,” said Callahan. “’Tis a bird he is.  Oleson was telling me.  The Scandehoovian was thryin’ to get him down to Gaston the day they ray-ceivered us.  Jarl says he wint a mile a minut’, an’ the little man never turned a hair.”

“Is he here yet; or did he go back to God’s country?” asked Engineer Scott, leaning from the cab window of the 1031.