not move, but he spoke in an
uncertain, quavering voice.

"You are Masters' son, ar'n't you?"

Christopher turned on him with fierce amazement, and checked himself.

"Answer my question, if you have anything to say to me, and leave my
private affairs alone," he said sternly.

"There you are," grinned the man, the thin mouth widening to a
distorted semblance of a smile, "seems to me, seems to my mates
'tain't such a private affair, neither, leastways we pay for it."

Christopher's instinct to turn the man out struggled with his
curiosity to know what it all meant. He stood still, therefore, with
his eyes fixed on the weirdly displeasing face and neglected to look
at the twitching hands.

"It were bad enough when Masters were alive, curse him, with his
'system' and his 'single chance,' and his sticking to his word,
but we knew where we was then. Now, none of us knows. Here's one
turned off cos he broke some rule he'd never heard of; another for
telling a foreman what he thought of him; my mate's chucked out for
fighting--_outside the Mill Gate_, look you--What concern be it of
yours what we do outside? It's a blessed show you do for us outside,
isn't it? I tell you it don't concern you anyhow, you lazy
bloodsucker--and look at me--I've worked for your father fifteen
year, and you turn me off--you and your precious heads of
departments,--because I was a day behind with my job. Well, what if I
was? Hadn't I a wife what was dying with her sixth baby, and not a
decent soul to come to her? We've been respectable people, we
have, till we came to live in the blooming gaudy houses at Carson."

"That's the Steel Axle Company's works, isn't it?" put in Christopher
quietly. He had not moved; he was intent on picking up the clue to the
mad indictment that lay in the seething flow of words.

"Yah. Don't know your own purse-strings," spluttered the denouncer,
growing incoherent with rising fury; "sit at home with your little
play-box of a works down here, with fancy hutches for your rabbits of
workmen, clubs, toys, kitchen ranges, hot and cold laid on. Oh, I've
seen it all. Who pays for it, that's what I want to know? who pays for
your blooming model works and houses?"

"I pay for it," said Christopher still quietly, "or rather the company
does. It comes out of working expenses."

The man gave an angry snarl of disbelief. "You pays, does you? I tell
you it's we who pays. You take our money and spend it on this toy of
your