Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/162

150 The young man beside him was the first to clear his throat and reply. He was prematurely bald and spectacled. He had the loose-laced shoes and woolen socks of a brain worker. And it was plain, before the conversation went very far, that he was learned in the law. The others, one by one, added their voices to the discussion as the newcomer drew them out with a question or a remark which his eyes directed. In ten minutes they were all in conversational attitudes, talking or listening; and the compartment looked like the smoking-room of a club.

Railroad legislation, "trust-busting," overcapitalization, the labor problem—these were the topics they discussed. The bald young man defended the Constitution and the Supreme Court, and deplored the lack of respect for the law in a republic where the law was the only king. In a wicker chair confronting him, a heavy-shouldered traveler, speaking with a cigar in his mouth and frowning at the signet ring which he turned and turned on his finger, voiced the exasperation of the business man, persecuted by lawyers and politicians, and unable to get employees who were "worth their salt." The third man lolled back with an ankle on his knee, his stogie uptilted almost to the brim of the derby that was slanted down over his eyes. He interjected into the argument the smoking-room stories of a "drummer," each prefaced with a curt laugh and continued nonchalantly between puffs.

The newcomer spoke of "Labor" with the sympathy of one who worked among laborers, in the open air,