tances. I have already taken all the steps possible in
that direction." Firmstone breathed easier. He saw, as he thought, the
error of his other half-formed suspicion. Hartwell was about to suggest
that Zephyr should not be alone in guarding the river.

Hartwell again leaned forward. He spoke meditatively, but his eyes were
piercing in their intensity.

"Yes. If in the event of the unexpected," he emphasised the word with a
suggestive pause, "recovery of the safe, it should be found not to
contain that amount, in fact, nothing at all, what would you have to
say?"

Every fibre of Firmstone's body crystallised into hard lines. Slowly he
rose to his feet. Pale to the lips, he towered over the general manager.
Slowly his words fell from set lips.

"What have I to say?" he repeated. "This. That, if I stooped to answer
such a question, I should put myself on the level of the brutal idiot
who asked it."

CHAPTER XIX

_The Fly in the Ointment_

At last the union was organised at mill and mine.

The men had been duly instructed as to the burden of their wrongs and
the measures necessary for redress. They had been taught that all who
were not for them were against them, and that scabs were traitors to
their fellows, that heaven was not for them, hell too good for them, and
that on earth they only crowded the deserving from their own. In warning
his fellows against bending the knee to Baal, Morrison did not feel it
incumbent upon him to state that there was a whole sky full of other
heathen deities, and that, in turning from one deity to make obeisance
to another, they might miss the one true God. He did not even take the
trouble to state that there was a chance for wise selection--that it was
better to worship Osiris than to fall into the hands of Moloch.

With enthusiasm, distilled as much from Pierre's whisky as from
Morrison's wisdom, the men had elected Morrison leader, and now awaited
his commands. Morrison had decided on a strike. This would demonstrate
his power and terrify his opponents. There was enough shrewdness in him
to select a plausible excuse. He knew very well that even among his most
ardent adherents there was much common sense and an inherent perception
of justice; that, while this would not stand in the way of precipitating
a strike, it might prevent its perfect fruition. Whatever his own
convictions, Morrison felt intuitively that ideas in the minds of the
majority of men were but character