all this mansion which has not already been preempted by
Dorothy and Nisbet?"

He slipped his arm about her again, and together they went out, across
the wide hall, toward the drawing-room. Rathbawne was standing at the
telephone under the stairway, but, as they approached him, he replaced
the receiver, and stepped forth under the light of the chandelier. They
both halted, shocked into speechlessness by the look on his face. The
past ten minutes seemed to have added a decade to his age. His cheeks
were white and drawn, and with his hands he groped before him, as if he
had been stricken blind. As he came close to them, he lifted his head,
and peered first at his daughter, and then at Barclay, seeming barely to
recognize them.

"Dad! What _is_ it?" said the girl, in a voice just above a whisper.

Rathbawne raised his hand, and pushed back the hair from his forehead.

"A message--from Payson--of the 'Sentinel,'" he mumbled. "It seems
there's a fire--a fire on Charles Street--near the mills--one of my
buildings--a shop--a shop. Some one in the crowd--threw a
torch in at the window--there is a great crowd--a throng of
strikers--watching--cheering the flames--hissing the firemen. They've
begun early--and this is only the beginning! My people--my people"----

He stumbled forward, and would have fallen, but that his daughter caught
him. To his dying day Barclay remembered how, as he sprang to aid her,
her hands gleamed, white and slender, against the black of Peter
Rathbawne's coat.

The hush that followed was broken presently by the sound of the old
man's choking sobs, and the low, soothing tones of Natalie, murmuring
against his ear. From the drawing-room came indeterminate scraps of Mrs.
Wynyard's gay chatter, as she regaled Mrs. Rathbawne with the gossip
gleaned in a round of calls. She herself was partly visible, drawing off
her gloves before the fire. From the music-room beyond issued the chords
of Dorothy's none-too-sure accompaniment, and young Nisbet's superb,
full tenor:--

"'Ah, love, could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire'"--

But, in the Lieutenant-Governor's imagination, another sound mingled
with and dominated these,--the voice of Michael McGrath, as he had heard
it that morning, through the open door of Governor Abbott's room:--

"It won't be a strike like other strikes, not so long as I'm running it,
that is. It's going to mean business from the word go!"