a deadlock. So long as the public would give, the
workers, passionately certain of the justice of their own cause, and
filled with new ambitions after more decent living, would hold out. On
the other hand, he perfectly understood that the masters had also in
many ways a strong case, that they had been very hard hit by the strike,
and that many of them would rather close their works or transfer them
bodily to the Continent than give way. Some of the facts Pearson had
found time to mention had been certainly new and striking.

At the same time he never disguised from himself for an instant that but
for a prospective 20,000 _l._ the facts concerned would not have
affected him in the least. Till to-night it had been to his interest to
back the strike, and to harass the employers. Now things were changed;
and he took a curious satisfaction in the quick movements of his own
intelligence, as his thought rapidly sketched the "curve" the _Clarion_
would have to take, and the arguments by which he would commend it.

As to his shares, they would be convertible of course into immediate
cash. Some man of straw would be forthcoming to buy what he would
possess in the name of another man of straw. It was not supposed--he
took for granted--by the men who had dared to tempt him, that he would
risk his whole political reputation and career for anything less than a
bird in the hand.

Well! what were the chances of secrecy?

Naturally _they_ stood to lose less by disclosure, a good deal, than he
did. And Denny, one of the principal employers, was his personal enemy.
He would be likely enough for the present to keep his name out of the
affair. But no man of the world could suppose that the transaction would
pass without his knowledge. Wharton's own hasty question to Mr. Pearson
on the subject seemed to himself now, in cold blood, a remarkably
foolish one.

He walked up and down thinking this point out. It was the bitter pill of
the whole affair.

In the end, with a sudden recklessness of youth and resource, he
resolved to dare it. There would _not_ be much risk. Men of business do
not as a rule blazon their own dirty work, and public opinion would be
important to the new Syndicate.

_Some_ risk, of course, there would be. Well! his risks, as they stood,
were pretty considerable. He chose the lesser--not without something of
a struggle, some keen personal smart. He had done a good many mean and
questionable things in his time, but n