l-mouthed
demagogue! I'll SHOW him!"

"Why, he doesn't amount to anything, father," remonstrated the girl.
"He's nothing but a common working man--isn't he?"

"That's all he is--the hound!" replied Martin Hastings. A look of
cruelty, of tenacious cruelty, had come into his face. It would have
startled a stranger. But his daughter had often seen it; and it did
not disturb her, as it had never appeared for anything that in any way
touched her life. "I've let him hang on here too long," went on the
old man, to himself rather than to her. "First thing I know he'll be
dangerous."

"If he's worth while I should think you'd hire him," remarked Jane
shrewdly.

"I wouldn't have such a scoundrel in my employ," cried her father.

"Oh, maybe," pursued the daughter, "maybe you couldn't hire him."

"Of course I could," scoffed Hastings. "Anybody can be hired."

"I don't believe it," said the girl bluntly.

"One way or another," declared the old man. "That Dorn boy isn't worth
the price he'd want."

"What price would he want?" asked Jane.

"How should I know?" retorted her father angrily.

"You've tried to hire him--haven't you?" persisted she.

The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said:
"What did that fool Hull boy say about Dorn to you?"

"He doesn't like him," replied Jane. "He seems to be jealous of
him--and opposed to his political views."

"Dorn's views ain't politics. They're--theft and murder and
highfalutin nonsense," said Hastings, not unconscious of his feeble
anti-climax.

"All the same, he--or rather, his mother--ought to have got damages
from the railway," said the girl. And there was a sudden and startling
shift in her expression--to a tenacity as formidable as her father's
own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.

Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with a
cigar.

"I don't blame him for getting bitter and turning against society,"
continued she. "I'd have done the same thing--and so would you."

Hastings lit the cigar. "They wanted ten thousand dollars," he said,
almost apologetically. "Why, they never saw ten thousand cents they
could call their own."

"But they lost their bread-winner, father," pleaded the girl. "And
there were young children to bring up and educate. Oh, I hate to think
that--that we had anything to do with such a wrong."

"It wasn't a wrong, Jen--as I used to tell your ma," said the old man,
much agitated and