Wahaska, microcosmic and village-conscious in spite of its city charter, was duly thrilled and excited when, on the day following the storm and shipwreck, it found itself the scene of an angry conflict between capital and labor.

Reports varied as to the origin of the trouble. Among the retired farmers, who still called Raymer "Eddie" and spoke of him as "John Raymer's boy," it was the generally expressed opinion that he was both too young and too easy-going to be a successful industry captain in the larger field he had lately entered. In the workingmen's quarter, which lay principally beyond the railroad tracks, public opinion was less lenient and the young ironmaster, figuring hitherto only as a good boss with a few unnecessary college ideas, was denounced as a "kid-glove" reformer who made his profit-sharing fad an excuse for advancing his favorites, and who was accordingly to be "brought to time" by the strong hand of the organization.

It was a crude surprise, both to the West Side and to "Pottery Flat," to find the new book-writing partner not only taking an active part in the fight, but apparently directing the capitalistic hostilities with a high hand. Quite early in the forenoon it was known on the street that Griswold had taken the field with Raymer; that the lock-out was his reply to the strike notice; and that it was at his suggestion that a dozen deputies had been sworn in to guard the Raymer plant—the iron works lying just outside of the corporation lines. A little later came the news that he had sent a counter ultimatum to the representatives of the labor forces sitting in permanence in their hall over McGuire's saloon. From two o'clock until five the offices of the plant would be open, and all former employees would be paid in full and discharged. Those who failed to make application between the hours named would not be taken back on any terms.

From two to five in the afternoon Wahaska, figuratively speaking, held its breath. At half-past three, young Dahlgren, of the Daily Wahaskan, spoiled a good story for his own paper by spreading the report that most of the men had sullenly drawn their pay, but as yet not a man of them had signed on for further employment. At four o'clock the Daily Wahaskan's windows bore a bulletin to the effect that a mass indignation meeting was in progress in front of the Pottery Flat saloon; and at half-past four it was whispered about that war had been declared. Raymer and Griswold were telegraphing for strike-breakers; and the men were swearing that the plant would be picketed and that scabs would be dealt with as traitors and enemies.

It was between half-past four and five that Miss Grierson, driving in the basket phaeton, made her appearance on the streets, evoking the usual ripple of comment among the gossipers on the Winnebago porch as she tooled her clean-limbed little Morgan to a stop in front of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank.

Since it was long past the closing hours, the curtains were drawn in the bank doors and street-facing windows. But there was a side entrance, and when she tapped on the glass of the door an obsequious janitor made haste to admit her. "Yo' paw's busy, right now, Miss Mahg'ry," the negro said; but she ignored the hint and went straight to the door of the private room, entering without warning.

As the janitor had intimated, her father was not alone. In the chair at the desk-end sat a man florid of face, hard-eyed and gross-bodied. His hat was on the back of his head, and clamped between his teeth under the bristling mustaches he held one of Jasper Grierson's fat black cigars. The conference paused when the door opened; but when Margery crossed the room and perched herself on the deep seat of the farthest window, it went on in guarded tones at a silent signal from the banker to his visitor.

There was a trade journal lying in the window-seat, and Miss Grierson took it up to become idly immersed in a study of the advertising pictures. If she listened to the low-toned talk it was only mechanically, one would say. Yet there was a quickening of the breath now and again, and a pressing of the white teeth upon the ripe lower lip, as she turned the pages of the advertising supplement; these, though only detached sentences of the talk drifted across to her window-seat.

"You're fixed to put the entire responsibility for the ruction over onto the other side of the house?" was one of the overheard sentences: it was her father's query, and she also heard the answer. "We're goin' to put 'em in bad, don't you forget it. There'll be some broken heads, most likely, and if they're ours, somebody'll pay for 'em." A little farther along it was her father who said: "You've got to quit this running to me. Keep to your own side of the fence. Murray's got his orders, and he'll pay the bills. If anything breaks loose, I won't know you. Get that?" "I'm on," said the red-faced man; and shortly afterward he took his leave.

When the door had closed behind the man who looked like a ward heeler or a walking delegate, and who had been both, and many other and more questionable things, by turns, Jasper Grierson swung his huge chair to face the window.

"Well?" he said, "how's Galbraith coming along?"

"There is no change," was the sober rejoinder. "He is still lying in a half-stupor, just as he was last night and this morning. Doctor Farnham shakes his head and won't say anything."

"You mustn't let him die," warned the man in the big chair, half jocularly. "There's too much money in him."

The smouldering fires in the daughter's eyes leaped up at the provocation lurking in the grim brutality; but they were dying down again when she put the trade journal aside and said: "I didn't come here to tell you about Mr. Galbraith. I came to give you notice that it is time to quit."

"Time to quit what?"

"You know. When I asked you to put Mr. Raymer under obligations to you, I said I'd tell you when it was time to stop."

Jasper Grierson sat back in his chair and chuckled.

"Lord love you!" he said, "I'd clean forgot that you had a tea-party stake in that game, Madgie; I had, for a fact!"

"Well, it is time to remember it," was the cool reply.

"What was I to remember?"

"That you were to turn around and help him out of his trouble when I gave you the word."

The president of the Farmers' and Merchants' tilted his chair to the lounging angle and laughed; a slow gurgling laugh that spread from lip to eye and thence abroad through his great frame until he shook like a grotesque incarnation of the god of mirth.

"I was to turn around and help him out of the hole, was I? Oh, no; I guess not," he denied. "It's business now, little girl, and the tea-fights are barred. I'll give you a check for that span o' blacks you were looking at, and we'll call it square."

"Does that mean that you intend to go on until you have smashed him?" she asked, quietly ignoring the putative bribe.

"I'm going to put him out of business—him and that other fool friend of yours—if that's what you mean."

Again the sudden lightning glowed in Margery Grierson's eyes, but, as before, the flash was only momentary. There was passion enough in blood and brain, but there was also a will, and the will was the stronger.

"Please!" she besought him.

"Please what?"

"Please ruin somebody else, and let Mr.——let these two go!"

Grierson's laugh this time was brutally sardonic.

"So you're caught at last, are you, girlie? I was wondering if you wouldn't come out o' that pool with the hook in your mouth. But you might as well pull loose, even if it does hurt a little. Raymer and Griswold have got to come under."

She looked across at him steadily and again there was a struggle, short and sharp, between the leaping passions and the indomitable will. Yet she could speak softly.

"That is your last word, is it?"

"You can call it that, if you like: yes."

"What is the reason? Why do you hate these two so desperately?" she asked.

Jasper Grierson fanned away the nimbus of cigar smoke with which he had surrounded himself and stared gloomily at her through the rift.

"Who said anything about hating?" he derided. "That's a fool woman's notion. This is business, and there ain't any such thing as hate in business. Raymer's iron-shop happens to be in the road of a bigger thing, and it's got to move out; that's all."

She nodded slowly. "I thought so," she said, half-absently: "and the 'bigger thing' has some more money in it for you. Oh, how I do despise it all!"

"Oh, no, you don't," he contradicted, falling back into the half-jocular vein. "You're a pretty good spender, yourself, Madgie. If you didn't have plenty of money to eat and drink and wear and breathe——"

"I hate it!" she said coldly. Then she dragged the talk back to the channel it was leaving. "I ought to have broken in sooner; I might have known what you would do. You are responsible for this labor trouble they are having over at the iron works. Don't bother to deny it; I know. That was your 'heeler'—the man you had here when I came. You don't play fair with many people: don't you think you'd better make an exception of me?"

Grierson was mouthing his cigar again and the smoky nimbus was thickening to its customary density when he said: "You're nothing but a spoiled baby, Madge. If you'd cry for the moon, you'd think you ought to have it. I've said my say, and that's all there is to it. Trot along home and 'tend to your tea-parties: that's your part of the game. I can play my hand alone."

She slipped out of the window-seat and crossed the room quickly to stand before him.

"I'll go, when you have answered one question," she said, the suppressed passions finding their way into her voice. "I've asked for bread and you've given me a stone. I've said 'please' to you, and you slapped me for it. Do you think you can afford to shove me over to the other side?"

"I don't know what you're driving at, now," was the even-toned rejoinder.

"Don't you? Then I'll tell you. You have been pinching this town for the lion's share ever since we came here—shaking it down as you used to shake down the"—she broke off short, and again the indomitable will got the better of the seething passions. "We'll let the by-gones go, and come down to the present. What if some of the things you are doing here and now should get into print?"

"For instance?" he suggested, when she paused.

"This Raymer affair, for one thing. You don't own the Wahaskan—yet: supposing it should come out to-morrow morning with the true story of this disgraceful piece of buccaneering, telling how you tried first to squeeze him through the bank loan, and when that failed, how you bribed his workmen to make trouble?"

"You go to Randolph and try it," said the gray wolf, jeeringly. "In the first place, he wouldn't believe it—coming from you. He wouldn't forget that you're my daughter, however much you are trying to forget it. In the next place he'd want proof—damned good proof—if he was going to make a fight on me. He'd know that one of two things would happen; if he failed to get me, I'd get him."

The daughter who had asked for bread and had been given a stone put her face in her hands and moved toward the door. But at the last moment she turned again like a spiteful little tiger-cat at bay.

"You think I can't prove it? That is where you fall down. I can convince Mr. Randolph if I choose to try. And that isn't all: I can tell him how you have planned to sell Mr. Galbraith a tract of 'virgin' pine that has been culled over for the best timber at least three times in the past five years!"

Jasper Grierson started from his chair and made a quick clutch into smoky space. "Madge—you little devil!" he gritted.

But the grasping hands closed upon nothing, and the sound of the closing door was his only answer.

When she had unhitched the little Morgan and had driven away from the bank, Miss Grierson did a thing unprecedented in any of her former grapplings with a crisis—she hesitated. Twice she drove down Sioux Avenue with the apparent intention of stopping at the Daily Wahaskan building, and twice she went on past with no more than an irresolute glance for the upper windows beyond which lay the editorial rooms and the office of Mr. Carter Randolph, the owner of the newspaper. But on the third circuit of the square, decision had evidently come to its own again. Turning the mare into Main Street, she drove quickly to the Winnebago House and drew up at the carriage step. A bell-boy ran out to hold the horse, but she shook her head and called him to the wheel of the phaeton to slip a coin into his hand and to give him a brief message.

Two minutes after the boy's disappearance, Broffin came out and touched his hat to the trim little person in the basket seat.

"You wanted to see me, Miss Grierson?" he said, shelving his surprise, if he had any.

"Yes. You are Mr. Matthew Broffin, of the Colburne Detective Agency, are you not?" she asked, sweetly.

Broffin took the privilege of the accused and lied promptly.

"Not that anybody ever heard of, I reckon," he denied, matching the smile in the inquiring eyes.

"How curious!" she commented.

Broffin's smile became a grin of triumph. "There's a heap o' curious things in this little old world," he volunteered. "What?"

"But none quite so singular as this," she averred. Then she laughed softly. "You see, it resolves itself into a question of veracity—between you and Mr. Andrew Galbraith. You say you are not, and he says you are. Which am I to believe?"

Broffin did some pretty swift thinking. There had been times when he had fancied that Miss Grierson, rather than Miss Farnham, might be the key to his problem. There was one chance in a thousand that she might inadvertently put the key into his hands if he should play his cards skilfully, and he took the chance.

"You can call it a mistake of mine, if you like," he yielded; and she nodded brightly.

"That is better; now we can go on comfortably. Are you too busy to take a little commission from me?"

"Maybe not. What is it?" He was looking for a trap, and would not commit himself too broadly.

"There are two things that I wish to know definitely. Of course, you have heard about the accident on the lake? Mr. Galbraith is at our house, and he is very ill—out of his head most of the time. He is continually trying to tell some one whom he calls 'MacFarland' to be careful. Do you know any one of that name?"

Broffin put a foot on the phaeton step and a hand on the dash. There were loungers on the hotel porch and it was not necessary for them to hear.

"Yes; MacFarland is his confidential man in the bank," he returned.

"Oh; that explains it. But what is it that Mr. Galbraith wants him to be careful about?"

Again Broffin thought quickly. If he should tell the plain truth.... "Tell me one thing, Miss Grierson," he said bluntly. "Am I doin' business with you, or with your father?"

"Most emphatically, with me, Mr. Broffin."

"All right; everything goes, then. Mr. Galbraith has been figurin' on buying some pine lands up north."

"I know that much. Go on."

"And he has sent MacFarland up to verify the boundary records on the county survey."

"To Duluth?"

Broffin nodded.

"I thought so," she affirmed. And then: "The records are all right, Mr. Broffin; but the lands which Mr. MacFarland will be shown will not be the lands which Mr. Galbraith is talking of buying. I want evidence of this—in black and white. Can you telegraph to some one in Duluth?"

Broffin permitted himself a small sigh of relief. He thought he had seen the trap; that she was going to try to get him away from Wahaska.

"I can do better than that," he offered. "I can send a man from St. Paul; a good safe man who will do just what he is told to do—and keep his mouth shut."

She nodded approvingly.

"Do it; and tell your messenger that time is precious and expense doesn't count. That is the first half of your commission. Come a little closer and I'll tell you the second half."

Broffin bent his head and she whispered the remainder of his instructions. When she had finished he looked up and wagged his head apprehendingly.

"Yes; I see what you mean—and it's none o' my business what you mean it for," he answered. "I'll get the evidence, if there is any."

"It must be like the other; in black and white," she stipulated. "And you needn't say 'if.' Look for a red-faced man with stiff mustaches and a big make-believe diamond in his shirt-front, and make him tell you."

Broffin wagged his head again. "There ain't goin' to be any grand jury business about it, is there?" he questioned; adding: "I know your man—saw him this afternoon over at the plant. He's goin' to be a tough customer to handle unless I can tell him there ain't goin' to be any come-back in the courts."

Miss Grierson was opening her purse and she passed a yellow-backed bank-note to her newest confederate.

"Your retainer," she explained. "And about the red-faced man: we sha'n't take him into court. But I'd rather you wouldn't buy him, if you can help it. Can't you get him like this, some way?"—she held up a thumb and finger tightly pressed together.

Broffin's grin this time was wholly of appreciation.

"You're the right kind—the kind that leads trumps all the while, Miss Grierson," he told her. Then he did the manly thing. "I'll go into this, just as you say—what? But it's only fair to warn you that it may turn up some things that'll feaze you. You know that old sayin' about sleepin' dogs?"

Miss Grierson was gathering the reins over the little Morgan's back and her black eyes snapped.

"This is one time when we are going to kick the dogs and make them wake up," she returned. "Good-by, Mr. Broffin."