ad gone Bannon repeated his invitation to sit down.

"You probably know why I've come," the delegate began. "Mr. Reilly has
charged you with treating him unjustly and with drawing a revolver on him.
Of course, in a case like this, we try to get at both sides before we take
any action. Would you give me your account of it?"

Bannon told in twenty words just how it had happened. The agent said
cautiously: "Reilly told another story."

"I suppose so. Now, I don't ask you to take my word against his. If you'd
like to investigate the business, I'll give you all the opportunity you
want."

"If we find that he did drop the hammer by accident, would you be willing
to take him back?"

Bannon smiled. "There's no use in my telling you what I'll do till you
tell me what you want me to do, is there?"

Bannon held out his hand when the man rose to go.

"Any time you think there's something wrong out here, or anything you
don't understand, come out and we'll talk it over. I treat a man as well
as I can, if he's square with me."

He walked to the door with the agent and closed it after him. As he turned
back to the draughting table, he found Hilda's eyes on him. "They're very
clean chaps, mostly, those walking delegates," he said. "If you treat 'em
half as well as you'd treat a yellow dog, they're likely to be very
reasonable. If one of 'em does happen to be a rascal, though, he's meaner
to handle than frozen dynamite. I expect to be white-headed before I'm
through with that man Grady."

"Is he a rascal?" she asked.

"He's as bad as you find 'em. Even if he'd been handled right--"

Bannon broke off abruptly and began turning over the blue prints. "Suppose
I'd better see how this next story looks," he said. Hilda had heard how
Pete had dealt with Grady at their first meeting, and she could complete
the broken sentence.

Bannon never heard whether the agent from the carpenters' union had looked
further into Reilly's case, but he was not asked to take him back on the
pay roll. But that was not the end of the incident. Coming out on the
distributing floor just before noon on Thursday, he found Grady in the act
of delivering an impassioned oration to the group of laborers about the
hoist. Before Grady saw him, Bannon had come near enough to hear something
about being "driven at the point of a pistol."

The speech came suddenly to an end when Grady, following the glances of
his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon n