upon any of the rest of that employee's time. To
do so was to act like a bully. The situation was unfair. It was taking
advantage of the fact that the employee was dependent on one for a
livelihood. The employee might permit the imposition through fear of
angering the employer and not through any personal inclination at all.

In his own case he felt that such an imposition would be peculiarly
obnoxious, for had she not read that cursed Klondike correspondent's
book? A pretty idea she must have of him, a girl that was too
high-toned to have anything to do with a good-looking, gentlemanly
fellow like Morrison. Also, and down under all his other reasons,
Daylight was timid. The only thing he had ever been afraid of in his
life was woman, and he had been afraid all his life. Nor was that
timidity to be put easily to flight now that he felt the first
glimmering need and desire for woman. The specter of the apron-string
still haunted him, and helped him to find excuses for getting on no
forwarder with Dede Mason.

CHAPTER VII

Not being favored by chance in getting acquainted with Dede Mason,
Daylight's interest in her slowly waned. This was but natural, for he
was plunged deep in hazardous operations, and the fascinations of the
game and the magnitude of it accounted for all the energy that even his
magnificent organism could generate.

Such was his absorption that the pretty stenographer slowly and
imperceptibly faded from the forefront of his consciousness. Thus, the
first faint spur, in the best sense, of his need for woman ceased to
prod. So far as Dede Mason was concerned, he possessed no more than a
complacent feeling of satisfaction in that he had a very nice
stenographer. And, completely to put the quietus on any last lingering
hopes he might have had of her, he was in the thick of his spectacular
and intensely bitter fight with the Coastwise Steam Navigation Company,
and the Hawaiian, Nicaraguan, and Pacific-Mexican Steamship-Company.
He stirred up a bigger muss than he had anticipated, and even he was
astounded at the wide ramifications of the struggle and at the
unexpected and incongruous interests that were drawn into it. Every
newspaper in San Francisco turned upon him. It was true, one or two of
them had first intimated that they were open to subsidization, but
Daylight's judgment was that the situation did not warrant such
expenditure. Up to this time the press had been amusingly tolerant