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Rh created within a week. It might be better to meet the issue squarely, and settle the matter once for all. Of course a fight would spell disaster; but, if the men were bound to strike, they might as well strike now and have done with it. The whole thing was so absurd, so unreasonable, so outrageously unjust, that the sooner it was disposed of the better.

Barry Malleson, sitting at the directors' table, had heard the discussion thus far without comment. His suggestions at the meetings of the board had, theretofore, been given such scant consideration that he had grown tired of making them. But he raised his voice now in mild protest at what was plainly the belligerent attitude of his fellow-members.

"Oh, say," he inquired, "can't this thing be fixed up somehow? Why not take Bricky back? What harm would it do? I know the fellow personally. He's not at all a bad sort."

The president of the company turned his head away in ill-concealed disgust; but Philip Westgate, sitting at a corner of the table, seemed to find Barry's comment of interest and began to cross-question him.

"Has any one requested you," he asked, "to intercede for Hoover?"

"Not a soul," replied Barry. "I'm doing it on my own responsibility."

"You say you are personally acquainted with the man; do you happen to know whether he is on terms of particular friendship with Stephen Lamar?"

"Why, yes. I've seen them together a good deal. They both belong to the Socialist League in which I myself am somewhat interested."

The president of the Malleson Manufacturing Company turned his head still farther away, and a look of deeper disgust spread over his usually immobile face.

"And the secretary of that League," continued Westgate, "is the woman known as Mary Bradley?"

"That's her name, yes."