Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/334

322 of a young woman who was entirely charming. The latter fact interested Price more than the former. He was of an age to be curious about the father because the daughter had probably inherited from him some of her qualities of mind; he was not of an age to appreciate that this tremendous hulk of a man had one of the most powerful mental equipments in the world of "transportation."

Price had not yet learned the limitations of his own intellect; and when a man still believes that at the proper opportunity he will prove himself another Napoleon, he is contemptuous of any genius that is not transcendent.

"I learned telegraphy when I was thirteen," the father said. "I was a conductor when I was eighteen. The directors picked me out to take Shield's Battery up the line to intercept Morgan when I was twenty."

It was boasting. But it was the millionaire modestly boasting of the poverty of his youth.

"General Morgan had been 'making a nuisance' of himself," his daughter reminded him.

"He had! He 'd been destroying houses and crops—and tearing up railroads—and burning bridges and derailing trains. For two days—for two days—there had n't been a train out of Cincinnati. Nuisance? The whole war had been a nuisance—drafting everybody—upsetting the country—making us run our trains from Columbus around by Xenia and Dayton so as to connect at the 'Transfer' for the South. But