by carefully omitting to come on the passenger,
and now you propose to fall back upon Rufford's method. I don't
approve."

Again the mine-owner said "Why don't you?" and the other voice took up
the question argumentatively.

"First, because it is unnecessary, as I have explained. Lidgerwood is
officially dead, right now. When the grievance committees tell him what
has been decided upon, he will put on his hat and go back to wherever it
was that he came from."

"And secondly?" suggested Flemister, still with the nagging sneer in his
tone.

There was a little pause, and Judson listened until the effort grew
positively painful.

"The secondly is a weakness of mine, you'll say, Flemister. I want his
job; partly because it belongs to me, but chiefly because if I don't get
it a bunch of us will wind up breaking stone for the State. But I
haven't anything against the man himself. He trusts me; he has defended
me when others have tried to put him wise; he has been damned white to
me, Flemister."

"Is that all?" queried the mine-owner, in the tone of the prosecuting
attorney who gives the criminal his full length of the rope with which
to hang himself.

"All of that part of it--and you are saying to yourself that it is a
good deal more than enough. Perhaps it is; but there is still another
reason for thinking twice before burning all the bridges behind us.
Lidgerwood is Ford's man; if he throws up his job of his own accord, I
may be able to swing Ford into line to name me as his successor. On the
other hand, if Lidgerwood is snuffed out and there is the faintest
suspicion of foul play.... Flemister, I'm telling you right here and now
that that man Ford will neither eat nor sleep until he has set the dogs
on us!"

There was another pause, and Judson shifted his weight cautiously from
one elbow to the other. Then Flemister began, without heat and equally
without compunction. The ex-engineer shivered, as if the measured words
had been so many drops of ice-water dribbling through the cracks in the
floor to fall upon his spine.

"You say it is unnecessary; that Lidgerwood will be pushed out by the
labor fight. My answer to that is that you don't know him quite as well
as you think you do. If he's allowed to live, he'll stay--unless
somebody takes him unawares and scares him off, as I meant to do
to-night when I wired you. If he continues to live, and stay, you know
what will happen, sooner or later. He'll find you out f