to a remark that brought a new brightness to her eyes and a proud
throbbing to her heart; but he did not observe the effect.

"Bright, clever chap--that Graydon Bansemer," he said comfortably.






CHAPTER II

THE CABLES





The General Manager of the Pacific, Lakes & Atlantic Railroad
System had had a hard struggle of it. He who begins his career with
a shovel in a locomotive cab usually has something of that sort
to look back upon. There are no roses along the pathway he has
traversed. In the end, perhaps, he wonders if it has been worth
while. David Cable was a General Manager; he had been a fireman.
It had required twenty-five years of hard work on his part to break
through the chrysalis. Packed away in a chest upstairs in his house
there was a grimy, greasy, unwholesome suit of once-blue overalls.
The garments were just as old as his railroad career, for he had worn
them on his first trip with the shovel. When his wife implored him
to throw away the "detestable things," he said, with characteristic