this impudent, white-livered thing that was an assault upon the customs he, Scofield, had instituted and time itself had honored!
"Telegram!" he barked to his stenographer. "Robert Mitchell, Los Angeles. Insist immediate withdrawal your entire line of commodity tariffs, series J. Basis carried in our own tariffs is only one we will recognize."
Mitchell answered:
"Decline to withdraw; our tariffs issued on actual basis on which charges are assessed."
The fight was on.
Arming himself cap-a-pie with tariffs, amendments, letters, and memoranda, Mitchell two days later followed his telegram to San Francisco. Most of his resources, however, were packed behind the wide, blond brow of John Hampstead, who accompanied his chief and was more eager for the fray than Mitchell. The battle began on Monday morning about ten of the clock, and was not finished with the day. The field of action was a room of this same gray building, where Howison, General Freight Agent of the S. F. & E. P., sat at the end of a long table, flanked right and left by assistant general freight agents, rate clerks, and even general and district freight agents called in from the field, all to convince Robert Mitchell and his lone rate clerk sitting at the other end of the table that their new tariff was a hodgepodge, without practical basis or the show of reason to support it. Scofield himself did not take a seat in the battle line, but looked in occasionally, either to walk about nervously or sit just back of Howison's shoulder.
On the afternoon of the second day, the enemy Traffic Manager appeared to watch Hampstead intently for half an hour. Again and again the keen old fighter saw his allied forces attack, but invariably this self-confident, smiling young man with a ready citation, the upflashing
