y it is the maintenance of the
present wage-scale and the removal of incompetent officers and men.
Secondly, make your protest absolutely unanimous to a man. Thirdly, don't
give the major time to fortify: keep your own counsels, and don't send in
your ultimatum until the final moment. And, lastly, shun violence as you
would a temptation of the devil."

"Yon's a man," said Angus Duncan, the member from the Amalgamated
Machinists, when the committee was filing out through the hotel corridor.

"Now you're shouting!" said Engineer Scott. "And you might say a man and a
brother."

XXIV

INTO THE PRIMITIVE

Tested upon purely diplomatic principles, Miss Van Brock's temper was
little less than angelic, exhibiting itself under provocation only in
guarded pin-pricks of sarcasm, or in small sharp-clawed kitten-buffetings
of repartee. But she was at no pains to conceal her scornful
disappointment when David Kent made known his doubts concerning his moral
right to use the weapon he had so skilfully forged.

He delayed the inevitable confession to Portia until he had told Loring;
and in making it he did not tell Miss Van Brock to whom he owed the sudden
change in the point of view. But Portia would have greatly discredited her
gift of insight if she had not instantly reduced the problem to its lowest
terms.

"You have been asking Miss Brentwood to lend you her conscience, and she
has done it," was the form in which she stated the fact. And when Kent did
not deny it: "You lack at least one quality of greatness, David; you sway
too easily."

"No, I don't!" he protested. "I am as obstinate as a mule. Ask Ormsby, or
Loring. But the logic of the thing is blankly unanswerable. I can either
get down to the dirty level of these highbinders--fight the devil with a
brand taken out of his own fire; or----"

"Or what?" she asked.

"Or think up some other scheme; some plan which doesn't involve a
surrender on my part of common decency and self-respect."

"Yes?" she retorted. "I suppose you have the other plan all wrought out
and ready to drop into place?"

"No, I haven't," he admitted reluctantly.

"But at least you have some notion of what it is going to be?"

"No."

She was pacing back and forth in front of his chair in a way that was
almost man-like; but her contemptuous impatience made her dangerously
beautiful. Suddenly she stopped and turned upon him, and there were sharp
claws in the kitten-buffetings.

"Do yo