long, and that Bannon
knew it.

Sure enough, only a few minutes had gone when Max turned back from a
glance at the marine tower and saw the little delegate standing on the top
step, looking about the distributing floor and up through the girders
overhead, with quick, keen eyes. Then Max understood what it all meant:
Grady had chosen a time when Bannon was least likely to be on the job; and
had sent the other man ahead to reconnoitre. It meant mischief--Max could
see that; and he felt a boy's nervousness at the prospect of excitement.
He stepped farther back into the shadow.

Grady was looking about for Peterson; when he saw his burly figure
outlined against a light at the farther end of the building, he walked
directly toward him, not pausing this time to talk to the laborers or to
look at them. Max, moving off a little to one side, followed, and reached
Peterson's side just as Grady, his hat pushed back on his head and his
feet apart, was beginning to talk.

"I had a little conversation with you the other day, Mr. Peterson. I
called to see you in the interests of the men, the men that are working
for you--working like galley slaves they are, every man of them. It's
shameful to a man that's seen how they've been treated by the nigger
drivers that stands over them day and night." He was speaking in a loud
voice, with the fluency of a man who is carefully prepared. There was none
of the bitterness or the ugliness in his manner that had slipped out in
his last talk with Bannon, for he knew that a score of laborers were
within hearing, and that his words would travel, as if by wire, from mouth
to mouth about the building and the grounds below. "I stand here, Mr.
Peterson, the man chosen by these slaves of yours, to look after their
rights. I do not ask you to treat them with kindness, I do not ask that
you treat them as gentlemen. What do I ask? I demand what's accorded to
them by the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of
Independence, that says even a nigger has more rights than you've given to
these men, the men that are putting money into your pocket, and Mr.
Bannon's pocket, and the corporation's pocket, by the sweat of their
brows. Look at them; will you look at them?" He waved his arm toward the
nearest group, who had stopped working and were listening; and then,
placing a cigar in his mouth and tilting it upward, he struck a match and
sheltered it in his hands, looking over it for a moment at Pet