g. "I ought to have broken in sooner; I might have
known what you would do. You are responsible for this labor trouble they
are having over at the iron works. Don't bother to deny it; I know. That
was your 'heeler'--the man you had here when I came. You don't play fair
with many people: don't you think you'd better make an exception of me?"

Grierson was mouthing his cigar again and the smoky nimbus was
thickening to its customary density when he said: "You're nothing but a
spoiled baby, Madge. If you'd cry for the moon, you'd think you ought to
have it. I've said my say, and that's all there is to it. Trot along
home and 'tend to your tea-parties: that's your part of the game. I can
play my hand alone."

She slipped out of the window-seat and crossed the room quickly to stand
before him.

"I'll go, when you have answered one question," she said, the suppressed
passions finding their way into her voice. "I've asked for bread and
you've given me a stone. I've said 'please' to you, and you slapped me
for it. Do you think you can afford to shove me over to the other side?"

"I don't know what you're driving at, now," was the even-toned
rejoinder.

"Don't you? Then I'll tell you. You have been pinching this town for the
lion's share ever since we came here--shaking it down as you used to
shake down the"--she broke off short, and again the indomitable will got
the better of the seething passions. "We'll let the by-gones go, and
come down to the present. What if some of the things you are doing here
and now should get into print?"

"For instance?" he suggested, when she paused.

"This Raymer affair, for one thing. You don't own the _Wahaskan_--yet:
supposing it should come out to-morrow morning with the true story of
this disgraceful piece of buccaneering, telling how you tried first to
squeeze him through the bank loan, and when that failed, how you bribed
his workmen to make trouble?"

"You go to Randolph and try it," said the gray wolf, jeeringly. "In the
first place, he wouldn't believe it--coming from you. He wouldn't forget
that you're my daughter, however much you are trying to forget it. In
the next place he'd want proof--damned good proof--if he was going to
make a fight on me. He'd know that one of two things would happen; if he
failed to get me, I'd get him."

The daughter who had asked for bread and had been given a stone put her
face in her hands and moved toward the door. But at the last moment she
tu