enjoined from printing
them at present, but that now or a year from now we'll tell the whole
story in every phase. With that hanging over him, I don't believe Judge
Ransome will care to issue any fake injunction."

"There's such a thing as contempt of court," warned Douglas.

"Making and unmaking judges, for example?" suggested Ellis.

"Just one final word to you." The Pierce face was thrust close to Hal's.
"You keep your hands off my daughter if you expect to live in this
town."

"My one regret for Miss Pierce is that she is your daughter," retorted
Hal. "You have given me the material for a leading editorial in
to-morrow's issue. I recommend you to buy the paper."

The other glared at him speechless.

"It will be called," said Hal, "'A Study in Heredity.' Good-day."

And he gave the retiring magnate a full view of his back as he sat down
to write it.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STRATEGIST

"Never write with a hot pen." Thus runs one of McGuire Ellis's golden
rules of journalism. Had his employer better comprehended, in those
early days, the Ellisonian philosophy, perhaps the "Heredity" editorial
might never have appeared. Now, as it lay before him in proof, it seemed
but the natural expression of a righteous wrath.

"Neither Kathleen Pierce nor her father can claim exemption or
consideration in this instance," Hal had written, in what he chose to
consider his most telling passage. "Were it the girl's first offense of
temerity, allowance might be made. But the city streets have long been
the more perilous because of her defiance of the rights of others. Here
she runs true to type. She is her father's own daughter. In the light of
his character and career, of his use of the bludgeon in business, of his
resort to foul means when fair would not serve, of his brutal disregard
of human rights in order that his own power might be enhanced, of his
ruthless and crushing tyranny, not alone toward his employees, but
toward all labor in its struggle for better conditions, we can but
regard the girl who left her victim crushed and senseless in the gutter
and sped on because, in the words of her own bravado, she 'had a train
to catch,' as a striking example of the influence of heredity. If the
law which she so contemptuously brushed aside is to be aborted by the
influence and position of her family, the precept will be a bitter and
dangerous one. Much arrant nonsense is vented concerning the
'class-hatred' stirred up b