Bunny drove up on Saturday morning; by which time the first flush of excitement had passed. It was a rainy day, and the men had no meeting place, and you saw bunches of them crowded into doorways, or under awnings, wherever there was free shelter; they looked rather melancholy, as if they found being on strike less romantic than they had expected. In front of the oil properties, especially those of the big companies, you saw men pacing up and down, wearing rubber coats and hats, from under which they eyed you suspiciously; some of them carried rifles on their shoulders, like military sentries. Bunny drove up to his father’s tract, and there he saw the same sight, and it cut him to the heart—the very personification of that hatred which so pained him in the industrial world, and which he had fondly dreamed he might exclude from the “Ross Junior” field. But the truth was, the “junior” aspects of the business were fading temporarily; the “senior” aspects were in control, and giving the impress to events. Sitting in the office on the tract, Bunny pinned his father down on the matter of guards; did they really have to have guards against their own men? “But surely, son,” protested Dad, “you can’t be serious! Leave three million dollars worth of property unprotected?” “Where did we hire these guards, Dad?” “We didn’t hire them, son; the Federation is handling that.” “But couldn’t we have got guards of our own?” “I don’t know any guards, or where to get them. I’d have had to go to some agency, jist the same.” “And we couldn’t have used our own men, that we know?” “Turn strikers into guards? Why, son, you must know that wouldn’t do!” “Why not?” “Well, for one thing, the insurance companies—imagine how quick they’d jump to cancel my fire insurance! And then, suppose I was to have a fire, I’d be ruined. Don’t you see that?” Yes, Bunny saw; it appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain. And he and his father were part of that system, and must help to maintain it in spite of themselves! “Do we pay for these guards, Dad?” “We’re assessed for it, of course.”