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 on that bright and audacious young gladiator, Henry Harrington."

This order was issued while Henry was delivering his second defiance by gleefully supervising Thorpe and the office boys as they piled waste baskets high with papers, pertaining to Boland litigation, and carted them into Scanlon's room. With a grateful sense of decks cleared for aggressive action in the next important matter, Harrington was just taking up from his desk that venire of one hundred citizens of Socatullo County from which tomorrow would be chosen the Adam John jury, when Thorpe reëntered apparently with something important on the tip of his tongue; but before he could get it off Scanlon himself had come charging in. He had got his orders.

The last time Henry had talked to the Chief Fixer, Scanlon had been mellow and mild, gently, incredulously reproachful. That day he had been one finger of the velvet glove, but now he was the boniest knuckle of the mailed fist. Disguises were off; dissimulations were dead; euphemisms were in the discard. He came to gloat; envy, jealousy, malevolence, hate, were all in his manner. "You young fool!" he exulted.

"Yes," admitted Harrington coolly; "I've been a fool."

"After all we've done for you! You ingrate! You—you traitor!"

Harrington straightened and paled, but did not strike, although his pose was the immobility of a coiled spring, and his voice was lowered dangerously. "I'm getting a little sensitive about those two compliments, Scanlon," he remarked acidly, "because they don't apply to me. There are ingrates and traitors, how-