strange that he tried to copy them when he came into charge of
Lloyd's. He was inclined to meet opposition with the same cool
inflexibility of persistency in his own views, and was disposed to
consult his own interests and carry out his own plans with no more
brooking of interference than the skipper of a man-o'-war.
Therefore, when it happened, shortly after his aunt's death, that he
conceived a dissatisfaction with some prominent spirits among union
men, he discharged them without the slightest reference to the fact
that they were old and skilful workmen, and employed non-union men
from another town in their places. He had, indeed, the object of
making in time his factory entirely non-union. He said to himself
that he would be dictated to by no labor organization under the sun,
and that went a step beyond his uncle, inasmuch as the elder Lloyd
had always made his own opinion subservient to good business policy;
but Robert was younger and his blood hotter. It happened, also, a
month later, when he began to see that business had fallen off
considerably (indeed, it was the beginning of a period of extreme
business depression), and that he could no longer continue on the
same scale with the same profits, that instead of assembling the men
in different departments, communicating the situation to them, and
submitting them a reduced price-list for consideration, as was the
custom with the more pacific of the manufacturers in the vicinity,
he posted it up in the different rooms with no ado whatever. That
had been his uncle's method, but never in the face of such brewing
discontent as was prevalent in Lloyd's at that time. It was an
occasion when the older man would have shut down, but Robert had,
along with his arbitrary impetuosity, a real dislike to shut down on
account of the men, for which they would have been the last to give
him credit. "Poor devils," he told himself, standing in the office
window one night, and seeing them pour out and disappear into the
early darkness beyond the radius of the electric-lights, "I can't
turn them adrift without a dollar in midwinter. I'll try to run the
factory a while longer on a reduced scale, if I only meet expenses."

He saw Ellen going out, descending the steps with the Atkins girls,
and as she passed the light, her fair head shone out for a second
like an aureole. A great wave of tenderness came over him. He
reflected that it would make no difference to her, that it was only
a q