y that
of pride and perversity. Was not the "Record" right, perhaps, after all?
If it was true that the strike was driving men to crime and women to the
streets--and if it was not, as yet, true, it soon must be--who, indeed,
was to blame if not he himself, who had said "Fight them!" when he might
have kept peace by a word?

Suddenly, the Lieutenant-Governor rose, and, crossing the room to where
the arms of Alleghenia hung upon the wall, took down the frame, laid
it, face up, upon the table, and, bending down, studied it intently. The
beautifully executed nude figures of Art and Labor stared steadfastly
back at him, their muscular hands grasping the circular shield, strength
and endurance in every line of their necks, shoulders, and thighs,
purity and purpose in their blue eyes and square-cut jaws. He was as
motionless as they for full five minutes. Presently his finger moved
slowly across the frame, and he said, quite softly:

"_Justitia--Lex--Integritas._"

Then he looked up, straight before him, out of the open window, where an
encircling wistaria was dotted with minute sprouts of green, and up at
the clear, wide sky.

"I'm right!" he said aloud. "I'm right!"

* * * * *

At five that afternoon, Spencer Cavendish set out upon the most
unpleasant assignment which had ever fallen to his lot. When Payson had
told him that he was to procure an interview with Peter Rathbawne for
the "Sentinel," with a special eye to the mill-owner's failing health,
as reported in the morning's "Record," he had shrunk back instinctively
from a task so distasteful, and was on the point of refusing. But two
considerations checked this impulse. If the thing were to be done at
all, he thought, surely it had better be the work of one friendly to the
Rathbawnes and with their interests at heart than that of a bungling
outsider, with it in his power to hurt them beyond expression. The
argument was plausible, but behind its logic, at the back of Cavendish's
brain, there lay another reason, without which the first had been
insufficient to persuade him. He wanted to see Natalie again--to meet
her under the shield of some compatible excuse, so that he should not
seem to have sought her of his own will. He was thirsty for a word from
her, thirsty with the pitiable thirst of the shipwrecked sailor who
knows a swallow of salt water will but increase his torture, and who
craves it, none the less. Long since, he had for