f those who were seeing life.

Then, near the end of January, events took another step forward. Rudolph
Klein was discharged from the mill.

Clayton, coming down one morning, found the manager, Hutchinson, and
Dunbar in his office. The two men had had a difference of opinion, and
the matter was laid before him.

"He is a constant disturbing element," Hutchinson finished; "I
understand Mr. Dunbar's position, but we can't afford to have the men
thrown into a ferment, constantly."

"If you discharge him you rouse his suspicions and those of his gang,"
said Dunbar, sturdily.

"There is a gang, then?"

"A gang! My God!"

In the end, however, Clayton decided to let Rudolph go. Hutchinson was
insistent. Production was falling down. One or two accidents to the
machinery lately looked like sabotage. He had found a black cat crudely
drawn on the cement pavement outside his office-door that very
morning, the black cat being the symbol of those I.W.W.'s who advocated
destruction.

"What about the girl?" Dunbar asked, when the manager had gone.

"I have kept her, against my better judgment, Mr. Dunbar."

For just a moment Dunbar hesitated. He knew certain things that Clayton
Spencer did not, things that it was his business to know. The girl might
be valuable one of these days. She was in love with young Spencer. The
time might come when he, Dunbar, would need to capitalize that love and
use it against Rudolph and the rest of the crowd that met in the little
room behind Shroeder's saloon. It was too bad, in a way. He was sorry
for this man with the strong, repressed face and kindly mouth, who sat
across from him. But these were strange times. A man could not be too
scrupulous.

"Better keep her on for a month or two, anyhow," he said. "They're up to
something, and I miss my guess if it isn't directed against you."

"How about Herman Klein?"

"Nothing doing," stated Mr. Dunbar, flatly. "Our informer is tending bar
at Gus's. Herman listens and drinks their beer, but he's got the German
fear of authority in him. He's a beer socialist. That's all."

But in that Mr. Dunbar left out of account the innate savagery that
lurked under Herman's phlegmatic surface.

"You don't think it would do if she was moved to another office?"

"The point is this." Dunbar moved his chair forward. "The time may come
when we will need the girl as an informer. Rudolph Klein is infatuated
with her. Now I understand that she has a certain feel