ed impatiently:

"Well, what is it?"

"You're Blanchard," Billy began. "I seen you yesterday lead out that
bunch of teams."

"Didn't I do it all right?" Blanchard asked gaily, with a flash of
glance to Saxon and back again.

"Sure. But that ain't what I want to talk about."

"Who are you?" the other demanded with sudden suspicion.

"A striker. It just happens you drove my team, that's all. No; don't
move for a gun." (As Blanchard half reached toward his hip pocket.) "I
ain't startin' anythin' here. But I just want to tell you something."

"Be quick, then."

Blanchard lifted one foot to step into the machine.

"Sure," Billy went on without any diminution of his exasperating
slowness. "What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not now, when
the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get you an' give you
the beatin' of your life."

Blanchard looked Billy over with new interest and measuring eyes that
sparkled with appreciation.

"You are a husky yourself," he said. "But do you think you can do it?"

"Sure. You're my meat."

"All right, then, my friend. Look me up after the strike is settled, and
I'll give you a chance at me."

"Remember," Billy added, "I got you staked out."

Blanchard nodded, smiled genially to both of them, raised his hat to
Saxon, and stepped into the machine.

CHAPTER XIII

From now on, to Saxon, life seemed bereft of its last reason and rhyme.
It had become senseless, nightmarish. Anything irrational was possible.
There was nothing stable in the anarchic flux of affairs that swept her
on she knew not to what catastrophic end. Had Billy been dependable, all
would still have been well. With him to cling to she would have faced
everything fearlessly. But he had been whirled away from her in the
prevailing madness. So radical was the change in him that he seemed
almost an intruder in the house. Spiritually he was such an intruder.
Another man looked out of his eyes--a man whose thoughts were of
violence and hatred; a man to whom there was no good in anything, and
who had become an ardent protagonist of the evil that was rampant and
universal. This man no longer condemned Bert, himself muttering vaguely
of dynamite, end sabotage, and revolution.

Saxon strove to maintain that sweetness and coolness of flesh and spirit
that Billy had praised in the old days. Once, only, she lost control.
He had been in a particularly ugly mood, and a final harshness and
unfairness cut