generation, he was clean shaven; hence there was no mask for the deeply graven lines of determination about the mouth and along the angle of the strong, leonine jaw.  In the region traversed by the great railway system the virile face with the massive jaw was as familiar as the illegible signature on the Inter-Mountain’s guest-book.  Though he figured only as the first vice-president of the Transcontinental Company, Hardwick McVickar was really the active head of its affairs and the dictator of its policies.

Across the small round table sat the railway magnate’s dinner-guest, a man who was more than McVickar’s match in big-boned, square-shouldered physique, and whose half-century was written only in the thick, grizzled hair and heavy, graying mustaches.  Like McVickar, he had the lion-like face of mastership, but the fine wrinkles at the corners of the wide-set eyes postulated a sense of humor which was lacking in his table companion.  His mouth, half hidden by the drooping mustaches, needed the relieving wrinkles at the corners of the eyes; it was a grim, straight-lined inheritance from his pioneer ancestors—­the mouth of a man who may yield to persuasion but not easily to opposition.

“I wish I could convince you that it isn’t worth while to hold me at arm’s-length, Senator,” McVickar was saying, as he clipped the end from his cigar.  “You know as well as I do that under the present law in this State we are practically bankrupt.  We are not making enough to pay the fixed charges.  We do a losing business from the moment we cross your State line.”

“Yes; it seems to me I have heard something that sounded a good deal like that before,” was the noncommittal rejoinder.

“You have heard the simple truth, then.  And it is a bald injustice, not only to the railroad company, but to the people it serves.  We can’t give adequate service when the cost exceeds the earnings.  That is the simplest possible proposition in any business undertaking.”

“And you can’t make out to convince the members of the State Railroad Commission of the simpleness?” asked the man whom the vice-president addressed as “Senator.”

“You know well enough that we can’t hope to convince a rabidly anti-railroad commission,” was the half-angry retort.

“Yet you are still running your railroad,” suggested the other.  “We don’t hear anything about your shutting down and tearing up the track.”

“No; luckily, the Transcontinental System does not lie wholly within your State boundaries.  If it did, we might as well surrender our charter and go out of business—­shut down and tear up the track, as you put it.”

“All of which has come to be a pretty old and well-worn story with us, McVickar,” said the listener quietly.  “I’m sure you didn’t make me motor thirty miles to hear you tell it all over again.  What do you want?”

“We want a square deal,” was the curt reply.