ent foremen were
with him. In the early hours of the forenoon a compromise was still
possible. The prompt closing of the shops had had its effect, and a
deputation of the older workmen came to plead for arbitration and a
peaceful settlement of the trouble. Raymer, who had evidently been
taking counsel with his womankind, would have consented to this
proposal, but Griswold fought it and finally carried his point. "No
compromise" was the answer sent back to the locked-out workmen, and with
it went the ultimatum, which Griswold himself snapped out at the leader
of the conciliators: "Tell your committee that it is unconditional
surrender, and it must be made before five o'clock this afternoon.
Otherwise, not a man of you can come back on any terms."

At the hurling of this firebrand, three of the five department heads
drew their pay-envelopes and went away. Then Griswold proceeded to make
the breach impassable by calling upon the sheriff for a guard of
deputies. Raymer shook his head gloomily when the thrower of firebrands
sent the 'phone message to the sheriff's office.

"That settles it beyond any hope of a patch-up," he said sorrowfully.
"If we hadn't declared war before, we've done it now. I'm prophesying
that nobody will weaken when it comes to the pay-roll test this
afternoon."

"Because we have taken steps to protect our property?" rasped the
fighting partner.

"Because we have taken the step which serves notice upon them that we
consider them criminals, at least in intention. You'd resent it
yourself, Griswold. If anybody should pull the law on you before you had
done anything to deserve it, I'm much mistaken if you wouldn't----"

"Oh, hell!" was the biting interruption; and Raymer could not know upon
what inward fires he had unwittingly flung a handful of inflammables.

It was during the paying-off interval in the afternoon that Broffin
strolled across the railroad tracks, and, after listening to one or two
of the incendiary speeches at the storm-centre mass meeting in front of
McGuire's, went on past the potteries to the Raymer plant.

Several things had happened since the afternoon when he had sat behind
the sheltering window curtain in the writing-room of the summer-resort
hotel listening to Miss Grierson's story. For one, Teller Johnson, of
the Bayou State Security, had pleaded his inability to leave his post
unless ordered to do so by the president: the cashier was sick and the
bank was short-handed. F