Bob looked at the discrepant figures with amazement.  He had checked the tags over twice, and both times the error had escaped his notice.  His mind, self-hypnotized, had passed them over in the same old fashion.  Yet he had taken especial pains with that list.

“I happened, just happened, to check these back myself,” Collins was saying rapidly.  “If I hadn’t, we’d have made that contract with Robinson on the basis of what these tags show.  We haven’t got that much seasoned uppers, nor anything like it.  If you’ve made many more breaks like this, if we’d contracted with Robinson for what we haven’t got or couldn’t get, we’d be in a nice mess—­and so would Robinson!”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Bob.  “I’ll try to do better.”

“Won’t do,” said Collins briefly.  “You aren’t big enough for the job.  I can’t get behind, checking over your work.  This office is too rushed as it is.  Can’t fool with blundering stupidity.”

Bob flushed at the word.

“I guess you’d better take your time,” went on Collins.  “You may be all right, for all I know, but I haven’t got time to find out.”

He rang a bell twice, and snatched down the telephone receiver.

“Hullo, yards, send up Tommy Gould to the office.  I want him to help me.  I don’t give a damn for the scaling.  You’ll have to get along somehow.  The five of you ought to hold that down.  Send up Gould, anyhow.”  He slammed up the receiver, muttering something about incompetence.  Bob for a moment had a strong impulse to retort, but his anger died.  He saw that Collins was not for the moment thinking of him at all as a human being, as a personality—­only as a piece of this great, swiftly moving machine, that would not run smoothly.  The fact that he had come under Fox’s convoy evidently meant nothing to the little bookkeeper, at least for the moment.  Collins was entirely accustomed to hiring and discharging men.  When transplanted to the frontier industries, even such automatic jobs as bookkeeping take on new duties and responsibilities.

Bob, after a moment of irresolution, reached for his hat.

“That will be all, then?” he asked.

Collins came out of the abstraction into which he had fallen.

“Oh—­yes,” he said.  “Sorry, but of course we can’t take chances on these things being right.”

“Of course not,” said Bob steadily.

“You just need more training,” went on Collins with some vague idea of being kind to this helpless, attractive young fellow.  “I learned under Harry Thorpe that results is all a man looks at in this business.”

“I guess that’s right,” said Bob.  “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said Collins over his shoulder.  Already he was lost in the rapid computations and calculations that filled his hours.

XI

Bob left the office and tramped blindly out of town.  His feet naturally led him to the River Trail.  Where the path finally came out on the banks of the river, he sat down and delivered himself over to the gloomiest of reflections.