gitating, throwing scares into the
party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now
it's fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then
we'll have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South
and donate our mills to the state for insane asylums."

"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.
They're getting sick of the unions now."

Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.

"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll
do us."

Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost
touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the
Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood
ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.

"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with
that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and
left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and
then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and
seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them
a gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and
energize him.

"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with
the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. I've
got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, where
were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the
door."

Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a
pencil on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea
of Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the
Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever
that hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that
strange surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had
experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against
him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited,
had wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she,
somehow, enlisted once again on his side.

"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know."

"Won't mention what?" she asked.

"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue
giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-