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 are looking for!" Copeland, as he spoke, stepped over to a chair, but he still remained on his feet.

"No, it has n't brought me what I 'm after," said the other man. "Not yet! But it 's going to, in the end, Mr. Copeland, or I 'm going to know the reason why!"

He kept warning himself to be calm, yet he found his voice shaking a little as he spoke. The time was not yet ripe for his outbreak. The climactic moment was still some distance away. But he could feel it emerging from the mist just as a pilot sights the bell-buoy that marks his changing channel.

"Then might I ask what you are after?" inquired Copeland. He folded his arms, as though to fortify himself behind a pretense of indifferency.

"You know what I 've been after, just as I know what you 've been after," cried Blake. "You set out to get my berth, and you got it. And I set out to get Binhart, to get the man your whole push could n't round up—and I 'm going to get him!"