ow before my face," cried McMurdo.

"I'll say it at my own time, in my own way."

"Tut! Tut!" said McGinty, getting off his barrel. "This will never do.
We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it's not for us to greet him
in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up!"

"Never!" cried Baldwin in a fury.

"I've offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him," said
McMurdo. "I'll fight him with fists, or, if that won't satisfy him,
I'll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I'll leave it to you,
Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should."

"What is it, then?"

"A young lady. She's free to choose for herself."

"Is she?" cried Baldwin.

"As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she was," said
the Boss.

"Oh, that's your ruling, is it?"

"Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin," said McGinty, with a wicked stare. "Is it
you that would dispute it?"

"You would throw over one that has stood by you this five years in
favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You're not
Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God! when next it comes to a
vote--"

The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the
other's neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his
mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not
interfered.

"Easy, Councillor! For heaven's sake, go easy!" he cried, as he dragged
him back.

McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken gasping for
breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the
very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.

"You've been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin--now you've got
it!" cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. "Maybe you think
if I was voted down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my
shoes. It's for the lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief
I'll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings."

"I have nothing against you," mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.

"Well, then," cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff
joviality, "we are all good friends again and there's an end of the
matter."

He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the
cork.

"See now," he continued, as he filled three high glasses. "Let us drink
the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can
be no bad blood between us. Now, then the lef