ed with sharpening pencils, he said:

"Some people think a lot of themselves, don't they, Charlie?"

Bannon looked up from his pencils; he was sitting on the edge of the bed.

"She seems to think she's better'n Max and you and me, and everybody. I
thought she looked pretty civil, and I didn't say a word she need to have
got stuck-up about."

Bannon asked no questions. After waiting to give him an opportunity,
Peterson went on:--

"There's going to be a picnic Sunday of the Iron Workers up at
Sharpshooters' Park. I know a fellow that has tickets. It'd be just as
quiet as anywhere--and speeches, you know. I don't see that she's any
better than a lot of the girls that'll be there."

"Do you mean to say you asked her to go?" Bannon asked.

"Yes, and she--"

Bannon had turned away to strop his razor on his hand, and Peterson, after
one or two attempts to begin the story, let the subject drop.

CHAPTER VII

Bannon had the knack of commanding men. He knew the difference between an
isolated--or better, perhaps, an insulated--man and the same man in a
crowd. Without knowing how he did it, he could, nevertheless, distinguish
between the signs of temporary ill feeling among the men and the perhaps
less apparent danger signal that meant serious mischief.

Since his first day on the job the attitude of the men had worried him a
little. There was something in the air he did not like. Peterson,
accustomed to handling smaller bodies of men, had made the natural mistake
of driving the very large force employed on the elevator with much too
loose a rein. The men were still further demoralized by the episode with
the walking delegate, Grady, on Thursday night. Bannon knew too much to
attempt halfway measures, so he waited for a case of insubordination
serious enough to call for severe treatment.

When he happened into the office about the middle of Saturday morning,
Miss Vogel handed him two letters addressed to him personally. One was
from Brown,--the last paragraph of it as follows:--

Young Page has told MacBride in so many words what we've all been guessing
about, that is, that they are fighting to break the corner in December
wheat. They have a tremendous short line on the Chicago Board, and they
mean to deliver it. Twenty two hundred thousand has got to be in the bins
there at Calumet before the first of January unless the Day of Judgment
happens along before then. Never mind what it costs you. BROWN.

P.S. MacB