had insisted
with his sour smile. But this was not to consider Kern's exceptional
skilfulness, known and recognized throughout the Heth Works. Replace a
girl who could bunch sixty-five hundred cheroots in a single day? No,
no, you could hardly do that....

For this dismissal there was an explanation, and it was not hidden from
the young physician. He spoke slowly, struggling not to betray the
murder in his heart.

"The devil's doing this because he knows you're a friend of mine. He
hits you to punish me.... By George, I'll show him!"

The intensity of his face, which in all moods looked somehow
kind-of-sorrowful to her, made Kern quite unhappy. She was moved by a
great desire to soothe Mr. V.V., to conjure a smile from him....

"Lor, Mr. V.V.! What do you and 'me care for his carryin's on? We can
get on heaps better without him than he can without Me! The
Consolidated'll jump down my throat--"

"You are going back to the Works," spoke Mr. V.V., in his repressed
voice.

"Oh!" replied Kern, trying not to look surprised. "Well, then, all
right, sir, Mr. V.V. Just whatever--"

"I'll give him one chance to take you back himself. I'll assume, for his
sake, that there's a misunderstanding.... If he refuses, so much the
worse for him. I shall know where to go next."

"Oh!--You mean John Farley?"

It was a shrewd guess. John Farley, sometime of the sick, and ever a
good friend of the Dabney House, was known to hold past-due "paper," of
the hard-driving Heth superintendent.

But Mr. V.V., continuing to speak as if something pained him inside,
only said, "I was not thinking of Farley...."

The young man stood silent, full of an indignation which he could not
trust himself to voice. Yet already he was beginning to put down that
tendency to a too harsh judgment which, as he himself admitted, was his
besetting sin ... Perhaps there was some misunderstanding: this
contemptible business hardly seemed thinkable, even of MacQueen. At the
worst, it was MacQueen personally and nobody else. No argument was
needed to show that the owners would not for a moment tolerate such
methods in their Works. Merely let them know what sort of thing their
superintendent was up to, that was all. O'Neill should see ... Mr. Heth,
to be sure, he did not happen to know personally....

"Well, then. That's all settled," Kern was saying, eagerly, "and I '11
go back to MacQueen or not go back, just whichever you want me, and
don't less think abou