This latest Griswold was puzzling him, and
with the puzzlement there went sorrowful regret; the regret that has
been the recanter's portion in all the ages. When he spoke it was out of
the heart of common sense and sanity.

"I know how you feel about it; I had a little attack of the same sort
this afternoon when the grievance committee dropped down on me. But
facts are pretty stubborn things, and they've got us foul. We have
twenty thousand dollars' worth of work for the Pineboro road on the shop
tracks, and the trouble-makers have picked their opportunity. If we
can't turn out this work, we'll lose the Pineboro's business, which, as
I have told you, is a pretty big slice of our business. Under such
conditions I don't dare to pull down a fight which may not only shut us
up for an indefinite time, but might even go far enough to smash us."

Griswold took his turn of silence, rocking gently in the tilting chair.
When the delayed rejoinder came, the harshness had gone out of his
voice, but there was a cynical hardness to take its place.

"It's your affair; not mine," he said. "If you've made up your mind not
to fight, of course, that settles it. Now we can come down to the
causes. You've been stabbed in the back. Do you know who's doing it?"

"The Federated Iron Workers, I suppose."

"Not in a thousand years! They are only the means to an end." The
tilting chair squeaked again, and he went on: "If I'm going to show you
how you can dodge this fight, I'll have to knock down a door or two
first. If I blunder in where I'm not wanted, you can kick me out. There
is one way in which you can cure all this trouble-sickness without
resorting to surgery and blood-letting."

"Name it," said Raymer eagerly.

"I will; but first I'll have to break over into the personalities. Have
you made up your mind that you are going to marry Margery Grierson?"

Raymer laughed silently, leaning his head back on the cushion of the
lazy-chair until his cigar stood upright.

"That's a nice way to biff a man in the dark!" he chuckled. "But if
you're in earnest I'll tell you the straightforward truth: I don't
know."

"Why don't you know?" If there were a scowl to go with the query, Raymer
could not see it.

"I'll be frank with you again, Kenneth. What little sentiment there is
in me leans pretty heavily that way. You have been with her a good bit
and you know her--know how she appeals to any man with a drop of red
blood in him. But I'm twenty