ed my appetite."

The man of peace shook his head dejectedly.

"I can't understand it," he protested. "Up to last night I was calling
you a benevolent Socialist, and my only fear was that you might some
time want to reorganize things and turn the plant into a little section
of Utopia. Now you are out-heroding Herod on the other side."

Griswold got up and crushed his soft hat upon his head.

"Only fools and dead folk are denied the privilege of changing their
minds," he returned. "Let's go up to the Winnebago and feed."

The dinner to which they sat down a little later was a small feast of
silence. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and it was not until after
the coffee had been served that Griswold leaned across the table to call
Raymer's attention to a man who was finishing his meal in a distant
corner of the dining-room, a swarthy-faced man who drank his coffee with
the meat course to the unpleasant detriment of a pair of long drooping
mustaches.

"Wait a minute before you look around, and then tell me who that fellow
is over on the right--the man with the black mustaches," he directed.

Raymer looked and shook his head.

"He's a new-comer--comparatively; somebody at the club said he gave
himself out for a lumberman from Louisiana."

Griswold was nodding slowly. "His name?" he asked.

"I can't remember. It's an odd name; Boffin, or Giffin, or something
like that. They're beginning to say now that he isn't a lumberman at
all--just why, I don't know."

Griswold's right hand stole softly to his hip pocket. The touch was
reassuring. But a little while after, when he was leaving the
dining-room with Raymer, he dropped behind and made a quick transfer of
something from the hip pocket to the side pocket of his coat. His hand
was still in the coat pocket when he parted from the young iron-founder
on the sidewalk.

"You'll be going home, I suppose?" he said.

Raymer made a wry face.

"Yes; and I wish to gracious you were the one who had to face my mother
and sister. They're all for peace, you know--peace at any old price."

Griswold laughed.

"Tell them we're going to have peace if we are obliged to fight for it.
And don't let them swing you. If we back down now we may as well go into
court and ask for a receiver. Good-night."

Though he had not betrayed it, Griswold was fiercely impatient to get
away. One tremendous question had been dominating all others from the
earliest moment of the morning awakeni