“This road is a pretty poorly conducted concern,” said a voice behind him, and Lee came up hurriedly and joined him.

“Yes,” replied Carroll, tentatively.  His was not the order of mind which could realize its own aggrandizement by wholesale criticism of a great railroad system for the sake of criticism, and, moreover, he had a certain pride and self-respect about maintaining the majesty of that which he must continue to patronize for his own ends.

“Yes,” said Lee, moving, as he spoke, with a sort of accelerated motion like a strut.  He was a much shorter man than Carroll, and he made futile hops to get into step with him as they proceeded.  “Yes, sir, every train through the twenty-four hours is late on this road.”

Carroll laughed.  “I confess that rather suits me, on the whole.  I am usually late myself.”

They walked together to the ferry-slip, and the boat was just going out.

“Always lose this boat,” grumbled Lee, importantly.

Carroll looked at his watch, then replaced it silently.

“Going to miss an appointment?” questioned Lee.

“No, think not.  These boats sail pretty often.”

“I wish the train-service was as good,” said Lee.

The two men stood together until the next boat came in, then boarded it, and took seats outside, as it was a fine day.  They separated a couple of blocks from the pier.  Lee was obliged to take an up-town Elevated.

“I suppose you don’t go my way?” he said to Carroll, wistfully.

“No,” said Carroll, smiling and shaking the ashes from his cigar.  Both men had smoked all the way across—­Carroll’s cigars.

“And I tell you they were the real thing,” Lee told his admiring wife that night.  “Cost fifteen cents apiece, if they cost a penny; no cheap cigars for him, I can tell you.”

Carroll said good-morning out of his atmosphere of fragrant smoke, and Lee, with a parting wave of the hand, began his climb of the Elevated stairs.  He cast a backward look at Carroll’s broad, gray shoulders swinging up the street.  Even a momentary glimpse was enough to get a strong impression of the superiority of the man among the crowd of ordinary men hastening to their offices.

“I wonder where he is going?  I wonder where his office is?” Lee said to himself, accelerating his pace a little as the station began to quiver with an approaching train.

What Lee asked himself many another man in Banbridge asked, but no one knew.  No one dared to put the question directly to Carroll himself.