steering-gear. Do you go down to the Beach to-morrow?"

"To-night. To-morrow I must put in practising on the track. I would
have been down to-day if there had not been so much to do here. Are
you coming with me, or not until the evening of the start?"

Dick stirred uncomfortably.

"I don't want to come at all, thank you. I saw you race once."

"You had better get used to it," Lestrange quietly advised. "The day
may come when there is no one to take your place. This factory will be
yours and you will have to look after your own interests. I wish you
would come down and represent the company at this race."

"I haven't the head for it."

"I do not agree with you."

Their eyes met in a long regard. Here, in the crowded room of workers,
the ceaseless uproar shut in their conversation with a walled
completeness of privacy.

"I'm not sure whether you know it, Lestrange, but you've got me all
stirred up since I met you," the younger man confessed plaintively.
"You're different from other fellows and you've made me different. I'd
rather be around the factory than anywhere else I know, now. But
honestly I like you too well to watch you race."

"I want you to come."

"I--"

One of the men with a vessel of white, heaving molten metal was trying
to pass through the narrow aisle. Dick broke his sentence to rise in
hasty avoidance, and his foot slipped in a puddle of oil on the floor.

It was so brief in happening that only the workman concerned saw the
accident. As Dick fell backward, Lestrange sprang forward and caught
him, fairly snatching him from the greedy teeth. There was the rending
of fabric, a gasping sob from Dick, and reeling from the recoil,
Lestrange was sent staggering against a flying emery wheel next in
line.

The workman set down his burden with a recklessness endangering
further trouble, active too late.

"Mr. Lestrange!" he cried.

But Lestrange had already recovered himself, his right arm crossed
with a scorched and bleeding bar where it had touched the glittering
wheel, and the two young men were standing opposite each other in
safety.

"You are not hurt?" was the first question.

"_I?_ I ought to be, but I'm not. Come to a surgeon, Lestrange--Oh,
you told me not to sit there!"

Lestrange glanced down at the surface-wound, then quickly back at the
two pallid faces.

"Go on to your work, Peters," he directed. "I'm all right." And as the
man slowly obeyed, "_Now_ will you take my advice an