oo, avoided
it. They two were apparently at an impasse regarding it. But Flint
inwardly rejoiced, knowing full well the plot now under way. And though
Waldron urged him to take some further action and force the issue, Flint
bade him hold his peace, and wait, telling him all would yet be well.

Outwardly calmer, the old man was raging, within, more and ever more
bitterly, against Armstrong. On July first, Slade had reported in person
that his operators who were trailing the quarry had--in the
night--discovered in one of his pockets a maple leaf wrapped in a fine
linen handkerchief marked "C. J. F." Flint, recognizing his
daughter's initials, well-nigh burst a blood-vessel for wrath. But he
instructed Slade not to have the handkerchief abstracted from
Armstrong's possession. By no sign or hint must the victim be made aware
that he was being spied upon. When the final blow should fall, then
(reflected the Billionaire, with devilish satisfaction) all scores would
be paid in full, and more than paid.

July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or
eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where--he had already
heard--ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of
which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning. Gabriel
counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and
celebration had been arranged. Ordinarily, he would have taken part in
the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of
sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd. There could be
little danger, thought he, in such a mass. Despite the recent stringent
censorship and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police,
a huge gathering was expected. The big railway and lake-traffic strikes,
both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and
economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these
last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist
movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.

"It will be worth seeing," thought Gabriel, as he stood outside the
lodging-house where he had taken a room for the night. The workers are
surely awakening, at last. The spirit I've been meeting, lately, is
uglier and more determined than anything I ever used to find, a year or
two ago. It seems to me, if conditions are like this all over the
country, the safety-valve is about ready to pop, and the