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Thayor," the voice began, half snarl, half whine. "That will do, Mr. Bergstein," returned Thayor briskly. "I believe the situation is sufficiently clear to need no further explanation on either your part or mine. I bid you good morning." Bergstein turned, with the look of a trapped bear, to Holcomb and the old man; what he saw in their steady gaze made him hesitate.
"I dunno; I ain't never laid eyes on her since," he answered wearily. "I can't even ask no one; father said he heard she was in Montreal, where Bergstein had some hold on her. I'd have took her back if I'd been free. 'T won't never be no use now I won't never be free, Mr. Thayor." Again silence fell upon the group; each one was occupied with his own thoughts.
That's where the peddler part of it struck me." Thayor made no attempt to reply; he was listening as calmly as a lawyer to a defence. "There are a lot of the boys here who think Bergstein is all right," Holcomb continued, "but neither Freme, Hite, nor myself liked his looks from the first.
I say "the news" since Bergstein did not put in an appearance to officially announce it. His mismanagement of the commissary department was laid at Thayor's door. The men's grumbling had been of some weeks' duration; their opinions wavering, swaying and settling under Bergstein's hypnotic popularity as easily as a weather-vane in April. Nowhere had they earned as good wages as at Big Shanty.
He could not help being personally convinced that the vice-president of the Canadian company was either a rascal or a man of poor judgment. It was also possible that the said vice-president had never seen Bergstein at all. Two nights later Holcomb again bade Thayor good-night in the square room with its heavy-beamed ceiling.
Thayor stood beside the broad writing table of his den as Bergstein entered; his manner was again that of the polite, punctilious man of affairs; he was exceedingly calm and exasperatingly pleasant. To all outward appearances the black-bearded man, grasping his dusty derby in his hand, might have been a paying teller summoned to the president's office for an increase of salary. "Mr.
In his talk with Holcomb, the night before, his manager had gone straight to the point. "You remember, do you not," he had said, "that a horse Bergstein bought died a week after its arrival the first horse we lost, I mean?" "Yes, Billy, I remember," Thayor had answered. "Poor beast. I remember also that you said in the letter that Bergstein was indefatigable in his efforts to save him."
"Will you kindly give this to the mother and the little girl," he said. "You will oblige me by not saying whom it is from." "Well, now, that's mighty good of you, Mr. Thayor," Bergstein faltered; "she'll "
It's hard on her she's got a little girl who was always ailin' sickly from the first." He fumbled at his scrubby black beard, his rat-like eyes focussed on the ground. "One moment, Mr. Bergstein," said Thayor, suddenly turning on his heel and going into the house. Presently he returned and handed Bergstein an unsealed white envelope.
"'Yes, said Ed, 'we heard something about it. That Jew horse-trader, Bergstein, told us, but there warn't nobody that seen ye, that was sure it was you. "'They lied then, said Bob, 'for there was more'n a dozen in the village that day that knowed me and warn't mistook 'bout who I was.
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