The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-10-16
CHAPTER XIV.
Maraery's Answer.


well, it has come at last" said
Raymer next morning. passing a new
ly opened letter of the morning de-
livery over to Griswold. 1.-The rail-
road people are taking their work
away from US. I've been looking for
that in every mail"
Griswold glanced at the letter and
handed it back. The burden was lying
heavily upon him, and his only COM
ment was a questioning, "Wen?"
At this, Raymer let go again.
whats the use?" he said defect
eddy. ''We're down, and everything
we do merely prolongs the agony. Do
you know that they tried to burn the
plant last night?"
mo; I hadn't heard"
They did. They had everything
fixed; pile of kindlings laid in the
mex and the whole thing saturated
with kerosene"
well, why didn't they do it,"
queried Griswold, half-heartedIy. After
the heavens have fallen, no mere ter
restrial cataclysm can evoke thrill.
That's mystery. Something hap
pened; just what, the Waterman who
had the machine shop beat couldn't
tell. He says there was a flash of light
bright enough to blind him, and then a
scrap Of some kind. When he got out
of the shop and around to the place,
there was no one there; nothing but
the pile of kindlings"
Griswold took up the letter from
the railway people and read it again.
When he faced it down on Raymer's
desk, he had closed with the conclu-
sion which had been thrusting itself
upon him since the early morning hour
when he had picked his way among
the sidewalk pools to the plant from
upper Shawnee street
You can still save yourself, Ed
ward" he said, still with the coIorless
note in his voice. And he added:
You know the way
Raymer jerked his head out of his
desk and swung around in the pivot
chair
See here, Griswold; the less said
about that at this stage of the game,
the better it will be for both of us!"
he exploded I'm going to do as 1
said 1 should, but not until this fight is
settled, one way or the otherI''
Griswold did not retort in kind.
THE condition has already expired
by limitation; the fight is as good as
settled now" he said, placably. 1--WE
are only making hopeless bluff. We
can hold our forty or fifty tramp work
men just as long as we pay their board
over in town, and don't ask them to re-
port for work But the day the shop
whistle is blown, four out of every five
| will vanish. We both know that"
, Then there is nothing for it but a
receivership," was Raymer's gloomy
decision
mot without miracle" Griswold
admitted. And the day of miracles is
past"
Thus the idealist out of a depth of
| wretchedness and self-exprobration
| hitherto unplumbed. But if he could
| have had even a momentary gift of
| telepathic vision he might have seen
a miracle at that moment in the pre-
liminary stage OF its outworking.
The time was half-past nine: the
I
| the Mereside lawn. The miracle work.
ers were two: Margery Grierson, radi-
ant in the daintiest of morning house
gowns, and, the man who had taken
her retainer. Miss Grierson was Curl
ously examining a Photographic print;
| the pictured scene was a well-littered
| foundry yard with buildings forming
an angle in the near BACKGROUND.
Against the buildings a pile of shaw
ings with kindlings showed quite clear
ly; and, STOPPING to ignite the pile,
was a man who had evidently looked
| up at. or just before, the instant of
camera-snapping. There was no mis-
taking the identity of the man. He
had round, pig-jowl face; his bris-
Ting mustaches stood out stiff1y as if in
sudden horror; and his hat was on the
back of his head
at amt very good" Brofin apollo
gized. The sun amt high enough vet
to make clear print. But you said
hurry and 1 reckon it will do
Miss Grierson nodded. You caught