night she had ever lived through, and it remained in her memory throughout her life. She in fact came to think later of that night as the time when, most of all, it would have been beautiful and right for her to have been able to give herself to a lover. Although she did not know it, the kiss on the cheek from the bewhiskered lips of Jim Priest had no doubt something to do with that thought when it came. And while the girl fought her battle with the strangeness of life and tried to break through the imaginary walls that shut her off from the opportunity to live, her father also rode through the night. With a shrewd eye he watched the face of Steve Hunter. It had already begun to get a little fat, but Tom realized suddenly that it was the face of a man of ability. There was something about the jowls that made Tom, who had dealt much in live stock, think of the face of a pig. “The man goes after what he wants. He's greedy,” the farmer thought. “Now he's up to something. To get what he wants he'll give me a chance to get something I want. He's going to make some kind of proposal to me in connection with the factory. He's hatched up a scheme to shut Gordon Hart and John Clark out because he doesn't want too many partners. All right, I'll go in with him. Either one of them would have done the same thing had they had the chance.” Steve smoked a black cigar and talked. As he grew more sure of himself and the affairs that absorbed him, he also became more smooth and persuasive in the matter of words. He talked for a time of the necessity of certain men's surviving and growing constantly stronger and stronger in the industrial world. “It's necessary for the good of the community,” he said. “A few fairly strong men are a good thing for a town, but if they are fewer and relatively stronger it's better.” He turned to look sharply at his companion. “Well,” he exclaimed, “we talked there in the bank of what we would do when things went to pieces down at the factory, but there were too many men in the scheme. I didn't realize it at the time, but I do now.” He knocked the ashes off his cigar and laughed. “You know what they did, don't you?” he asked. “I asked you all not to sell any of your stock. I didn't want to get the whole town bitter. They wouldn't have lost anything. I promised to see them through, to get the plant for them at a low price, to put them in the way to make some real money. They played the game in a small-town way. Some men can think of thousands of dollars, others have to think of hundreds. It's all their minds are big enough to comprehend. They snatch at a little measly advantage and miss the big one. That's what these men have done.”