“I do!” answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known in weeks. “‘Tis me budget I’ll be fixin’ up immejiate at once.  Ye’ll get action, ye will.”  He departed for a frenzied month.  Then he returned at the request of President Barstow.

“You’re doing wonderful work, Martin,” said that official.  “It’s coming along splendidly.  But—­but——­I understand there’s a bit of a laugh going around among the railroad men about you.”

“About me?” Garrity’s chest bulged aggressively.  “An’ who’s laughin?”

“Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri.  They say you let some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough.  I——­”

“Sting me?” Martin bellowed the words.  “That I did not!”

“Good!  I knew——­”

“I ordered it of me own free will.  And if annybody laughs——­”

“But, Martin”—­and there was pathos in the voice—­“a rotary snow plough?  On a Missouri railroad?  Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge ploughs—­tunnel wideners—­and a rotary?  Here?  Why—­I—­I thought better of you than that.  We haven’t had a snow in Missouri that would require all of those things, not in the last ten years.  What did they cost?”

“Eighty-three thousand, fi’hunnerd an’ ten dollars,” answered Martin gloomily.  He had pulled a boner.  Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of paper.

“At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track labourers for thirty days.  A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast in a month, Martin.”

“That they could, sir,” came dolefully.  Then Garrity, the old lump in his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office.  That rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea—­and it had been wrong!

Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object parked in front of the roundhouse.  Behind it were other contraptions of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second glance—­his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived.  Nor did he approach for a closer view.  Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd; then laughter.  He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with derisive comment.  His hands clenched.  His red neck bulged.  His big lungs filled—­then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward, in silence.

“And is it your liver?” asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner.

“It is not!” bawled Martin.  He rose.  He pulled his napkin from his chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy.  He thumped about the table, then stopped.

One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with intended gentleness upon the woman’s shoulder, to rest, trembling there, a second.  Then silently Martin went on upstairs.  For that touch had told her that it was—­his heart!