, you men, get back to work!" cried Herzog, suddenly. "No
hand-shaking here, and no speech-making. This man's a sneak-thief and
he's fired, that's all there is to it. Now, get onto your job! The first
man that puts up a complaint about it, can get through, too!"

For a moment they glowered at him, there in the white-lighted glare of
the big shop. A fight, even then, was perilously near, but Armstrong
averted it by turning away.

"I'm done." he repeated. He gathered up a few tools that belonged to
him, personally, gave one look at his comrades, waved a hand at them,
and then, followed by Herzog, strode off down the long aisle, toward the
door.

"Herzog," said he, calmly and with cold emphasis, "listen to this."

"Get out! Get your time, I tell you, and go!" repeated the bully. "To
Hell with you! Clear out of here!"

"I'm going," the young man answered. "But before I do, remember this;
you grazed death, just now. Well for you, Herzog, almighty well for you,
my temper didn't best me. For remember, you struck me and called me
'thief'--and that sort of thing can't be forgotten, ever, even though
we live a thousand years.

"Remember, Herzog--not now, but sometime. Remember that one
word--sometime! That's all!"

With no further speech, and while Herzog still stood there by the shop
door, sneering at him, Armstrong turned and passed out. A few minutes
later he had been paid off, had packed his knapsack with his few
belongings, and was outside the big palisade, striding along the hard
and glaring road toward the station.

"I did it," his one overmastering thought was. "Thank heaven, I did it!
I held my temper and my tongue, didn't kill that spawn of Hell, and
saved the whole situation. I'm out of a job, true enough, and out of the
plant; but after all, I'm free--and I know what's in the wind!

"There's yet hope. There'll be a way, a way to do this work! What a man
_must_ do, he _can_ do!"

Up came Armstrong's chin, as he walked. His shoulders squared, with
strength and purpose, and his stride swung into the easy machine gait
that had already carried him so many thousand miles along the hard and
bitter highways of the world.

As he strode away, on the long road toward he knew not what, words
seemed to form and shape in his strengthened and refortified mind--words
for long years forgotten--words that he once had heard at his mother's
knee:

"_He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city!_"