There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the big-hearted little master mechanic's working face.
"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way.
"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent—not a thing on earth to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't right, Carleton—it ain't right—it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery. And—and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way."
"To blame?" repeated Carleton.
"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two oldest men—and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?"
Carleton shook his head.
"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got settled in the saddle."
Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache.
"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd put one over on the pup—I would that! There ain't any birth register that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was fifty I'd take his word for it."
"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his job."