A moment after Hiram roused the packing room of the flour mill with the master’s eye, he was in the cooperage, the center of a group round one of the hooping machines.  It had got out of gear, and the workman had bungled in shutting off power; the result was chaos that threatened to stop the whole department for the rest of the day.  Ranger brushed away the wrangling tinkerers and examined the machine.  After grasping the problem in all its details, he threw himself flat upon his face, crawled under the machine, and called for a light.  A moment later his voice issued again, in a call for a hammer.  Several minutes of sharp hammering; then the mass of iron began to heave.  It rose at the upward pressure of Ranger’s powerful arms and legs, shoulders and back; it crashed over on its side; he stood up and, without pause or outward sign of his exertion of enormous strength, set about adjusting the gearing to action, with the broken machinery cut out.  “And he past sixty!” muttered one workman to another, as a murmur of applause ran round the admiring circle.  Clearly Hiram Ranger was master there not by reason of money but because he was first in brain and in brawn; not because he could hire but because he could direct and do.

In the front rank of the ring of on-looking workmen stood a young man, tall as himself and like him in the outline of his strong features, especially like him in the fine curve of the prominent nose.  But in dress and manner this young man was the opposite of the master workman now facing him in the dust and sweat of toil.  He wore a fashionable suit of light gray tweed, a water-woven Panama with a wine-colored ribbon, a wine-colored scarf; several inches of wine-colored socks showed below his high-rolled, carefully creased trousers.  There was a seal ring on the little finger of the left of a pair of large hands strong with the symmetrical strength which is got only at “polite” or useless exercise.  Resting lightly between his lips was a big, expensive-looking Egyptian cigarette; the mingled odor of that and a delicate cologne scented the air.  With a breeziness which a careful observer of the niceties of manner might have recognized as a disguise of nervousness, the young man advanced, extending his right hand.

“Hello, father!” said he, “I came to bring you home to lunch.”

The master workman did not take the offered hand.  After a quick glance of pride and pleasure which no father could have denied so manly and handsome a son, he eyed the young man with a look that bit into every one of his fashionable details.  Presently he lifted his arm and pointed.  The son followed the direction of that long, strong, useful-looking forefinger, until his gaze rested upon a sign:  “No Smoking”—­big, black letters on a white background.

“Beg pardon,” he stammered, flushing and throwing away the cigarette.

The father went to the smoking butt and set his foot upon it.  The son’s face became crimson; he had flung the cigarette among the shavings which littered the floor.  “The scientists say a fire can’t be lighted from burning tobacco,” he said, with a vigorous effort to repair the rent in his surface of easy assurance.