ith wounded vanity. "The despatches are yours," he
said, bowing with marked reverence. "But, as this may be my last
opportunity of speaking to you in some days, I have that to say which I
urge you for your own sake, your brother's sake, your father's sake, to
hear and heed. On many occasions I have conscientiously striven to point
out to your honored, if somewhat opinionated, sire the injustice, indeed
I may say the brutality, of the views he so openly expresses towards the
labor class. He has not received my advice in the kindly spirit in which
it was offered, but, as possibly you know, matters have come to a
climax, and such is the gravity of the situation that not only is his
property in jeopardy, but his life. Nay, I know you have not forgiven me
for words spoken only through motives of the most loyal and honorable
devotion to your best interests. I see this bores you; but, Miss
Allison, let me say to you in so many words that if the P.Q. & R. road
persists in its refusal to restore those trainmen who were discharged
yesterday for side-tracking a Pullman car at Grand Crossing, your
father's life may be the forfeit."

[Illustration: "May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr. Elmendorf?"]

"And yet the strike-leaders declare there is no violence, and that the
strikers will commit none," she said, wearily.

"That was the spirit with which they entered upon this controversy; but
when the managers persisted in hiring men to fill their places, and even
dared to discharge employees for no worse crime than sympathy with their
own brothers, even they who have listened to and obeyed me in the past
murmur and threaten now. It will take my uttermost--as it shall be my
sweetest--effort to stand between you and harm----"

But here the pink corded silk swished disdainfully about, its Watteau
pleat flashed out of sight through the door-day, and that portal was
slammed in the speaker's face. The mover of multitudes found himself
alone in the darkened hall, snubbed and wrathful. Cary's room was just
above, and the tutor smiled sardonically as, peering in there, he saw
the boy lying half dressed upon his bed, covered by a Navajo blanket
that Forrest had given him on his birthday, a revolver on the chair. A
moment later, in his own room, he found pinned on his toilet-table a
note addressed in Allison's well-known hand. It was a curt dismissal
from his service, subject to the stipulated "one month's notice," and an
intimation that