THE next morning Oakley saw General Cornish off on the 7.15 train, and then went back to his hotel for breakfast Afterwards, on his way to the office he mailed a check to Ezra Hart for his father. The money was intended to meet his expenses in coming West.

He was very busy all that day making out his new schedules, and in figuring the cuts and just what they would amount to. He approached his task with a certain reluctance, for it was as unpleasant to him personally as it was necessary to the future of the road, and he knew that no half-way measures would suffice. He must cut, as a surgeon cuts, to save. By lopping away a man here and there, giving his work to some other man, or dividing it up among two or three men, he managed to peel off two thousand dollars on the year. He counted that a very fair day's work.

He would start his reform with no particular aggressiveness. He would retire the men he intended to dismiss from the road one at a time. He hoped they would take the hint and hunt other positions. At any rate, they could not get back until he was ready to take them back, as Cornish had assured him he would not be interfered with. He concluded not to hand the notices and orders to Miss Walton, the typewriter, to copy. She might let drop some word that would give his victims an inkling of what was in store for them. He knew there were unpleasant scenes ahead of him, but there was no need to anticipate. When at last his figures for the cuts were complete he would have been grateful for some one with whom to discuss the situation. All at once his responsibilities seemed rather heavier than he had bargained for.

There were only two men in the office besides himself—Philip Kerr, the treasurer, and Byron Holt, his assistant. They were both busy with the payroll, as it was the sixth of the month, and they commenced to pay off in the shops on the tenth.

He had little or no use for Kerr, who still showed, where he dared, in small things his displeasure that an outsider had been appointed manager of the road. He had counted on the place for himself for a number of years, but a succession of managers had come and gone apparently without its ever having occurred to General Cornish that an excellent executive was literally spoiling in the big, bare, general offices of the line.

This singular indifference on the part of Cornish to his real interests had soured a disposition that at its best had more of acid in it than anything else. As there was no way in which he could make his resentment known to the general, even if he had deemed such a course expedient, he took it out of Oakley, and kept his feeling for him on ice. Meanwhile he hided his time, hoping for Oakley's downfall and his own eventual recognition.

With the assistant treasurer, Dan's relations were entirely cordial. Holt was a much younger man than Kerr, as frank and open as the other was secret and reserved. When the six-o'clock whistle blew he glanced up from his work and said:

“I wish you'd wait a moment, Holt. I want to see you.”

Kerr had already gone home, and Miss Walton was adjusting her hat before a bit of a mirror that hung on the wall back of her desk. “All right,” responded Holt, cheerfully.

“Just draw up your chair,” said Oakley, handing his papers to him. At first Holt did not understand; then he began to whistle softly, and fell to checking off the various cuts with his forefinger.

“What do you think of the job, Byron?” inquired Oakley.

“Well, I'm glad I don't get laid off, that's sure. Say, just bear in mind that I'm going to be married this summer.”

“You needn't worry; only I didn't know that.”

“Well, please don't forget it, Mr. Oakley.”

Holt ran over the cuts again. Then he asked:

“Who's going to stand for this? You or the old man? I hear he was in town last night.”

“I stand for it, but of course he approves.”

“I'll bet he approves,” and the assistant treasurer grinned. “This is the sort of thing that suits him right down to the ground.”

“How about the hands? Do you know if they are members of any union?”

“No, but there'll be lively times ahead for you. They are a great lot of kickers here.”

“Wait until I get through. I haven't touched the shops yet; that's to come later. I'll skin closer before I'm done.” Oakley got up and lit his pipe. “The plant must make some sort of a showing. We can't continue at the rate we have been going. I suppose you know what sort of shape it would leave the town in if the shops were closed.”

“Damn poor shape, I should say. Why, it's the money that goes in and out of this office twice a month that keeps the town alive. It couldn't exist a day without that.”

“Then it behooves us to see to it that nothing happens to the shops or road. I am sorry for the men I am laying off, but it can't be helped.”

“I see you are going to chuck Hoadley out of his good thing at the Junction. If he was half white he'd a gone long ago. He must lay awake nights figuring how he can keep decently busy.”

“Is the list all right?”

“Yes. No, it's not, either. You've marked off Joe Percell at Harrison. He used to brake for the Huckleberry until he lost an arm. His is a pension job.”

“Put his name back, then. How do you think it's going to work?”

“Oh, it will work all right, because it has to, but they'll all be cussing you,” with great good humor. “What's the matter, anyhow? Did the old man throw a fit at the size of the pay-roll?”

“Not exactly, but he came down here with his mind made up to sell the road to the M. & W.”

“You don't say so!”

“I talked him out of that, but we must make a showing, for he's good and tired, and may dump the whole business any day.”

“Well, if he does that there'll be no marrying or giving in marriage for me this summer. It will be just like a Shaker settlement where I am concerned.”

Dan laughed. “Oh, you'd be all right, Holt. You'd get something else, or the M. & W. would keep you on.”

“I don't know about that. A new management generally means a clean sweep all round, and my berth's a pretty good one.”

In some manner a rumor of the changes Oakley proposed making did get abroad, and he was promptly made aware that his popularity in Antioch was a thing of the past. He was regarded as an oppressor from whom some elaborate and wanton tyranny might be expected. While General Cornish suffered their inefficiency, his easy-going predecessors had been content to draw their salaries and let it go at that, a line of conduct which Antioch held to be entirely proper. This new man, however, was clearly an upstart, cursed with an insane and destructive ambition to earn money from the road.

Suppose it did not pay. Cornish could go down into his pocket for the difference, just as he had always done.

What the town did not know, and what it would not have believed even if it had been told, was that the general had been on the point of selling—a change that would have brought hardship to every one. The majority of the men in the shops owned their own homes, and these homes represented the savings of years. The sudden exodus of two or three hundred families meant of necessity widespread ruin. Those who were forced to go away would have to sacrifice everything they possessed to get away, while those who remained would be scarcely better off. But Antioch never considered such a radical move as even remotely possible. It counted the shops a fixture; they had always been there, and for this sufficient reason they would always remain.

The days wore on, one very like another, with their spring heat and lethargy. Occasionally, Oakley saw Miss Emory on the street to bow to, but not to speak with; while he was grateful for these escapes, he found himself thinking of her very often. He fancied—and he was not far wrong—that she was finding Antioch very dull. He wondered, too, if she was seeing much of Ryder. He imagined that she was; and here again he was not far wrong. Now and then he was seized with what he felt to be a weak desire to call, but he always thought better of it in time, and was always grateful he had not succumbed to the impulse. But her mere presence in Antioch seemed to make him dissatisfied and resentful of its limitations. Ordinarily he was not critical of his surroundings. Until she came, that he was without companionship and that the town was given over to a deadly inertia which expressed itself in the collapsed ambition of nearly every man and woman he knew, had scarcely affected him beyond giving him a sense of mild wonder.

He had heard nothing of his father, and in the pressure of his work and freshened interest in the fortunes of the Huckleberry, had hardly given him a second thought. He felt that, since he had sent money to him, he was in a measure relieved of all further responsibility. If his father did not wish to come to him, that was his own affair. He had placed no obstacle in his way.

He had gone through life without any demand having been made on his affections. On those rare occasions that he devoted to self-analysis he seriously questioned if he possessed any large capacity in that direction. The one touch of sentiment to which he was alive was the feeling he centred about the few square feet of turf where his mother lay under the sweet-briar and the old elms in the burying-plot of the little Eastern village. The sexton was instructed to see that the spot was not neglected, and that there were always flowers on the grave. She had loved flowers. It was somehow a satisfaction to Dan to overpay him for this care. But he had his moments of remorse, because he was unable to go back there. Once or twice he had started East, fully intending to do so, but had weakened at the last moment. Perhaps he recognized that while it was possible to return to a place, it was not possible to return to an emotion.

Oakley fell into the habit of working at the office after the others left in the evening. He liked the quiet of the great bare room and the solitude of the silent, empty shops. Sometimes Holt remained, too, and discussed his matrimonial intentions, or entertained his superior with an account of his previous love affairs, for the experiences were far beyond his years. He had exhausted the possibilities of Antioch quite early in life. At one time or another he had either been engaged, or almost engaged, to every pretty girl in the place. He explained his seeming inconsistency, however, by saying he was naturally of a very affectionate disposition.