After Routt left him, Kite sat for a while, fingers tapping nervously on his desk, wondering what to do next. And he wondered if it could be that Routt was right, that Amos was back of this move on Wint’s part. Routt had said Amos would do this; so, Kite remembered, had the elder Chase. Chase had come to him, shortly after the election, to warn Kite that this was sure to happen. Were Routt and Chase right; was it possible that Amos had betrayed him? Kite would not believe it. Not because he had any doubt of Amos’s willingness to betray him, but because he did not dare believe that this was Amos’s doing. If Wint had made the move on his own account, there was some hope of swaying him, or frightening him. But if Amos had prompted it and were backing Wint now, the situation was almost hopeless. Therefore Kite refused to believe that Amos was responsible; he clung to the idea that the whole thing was Wint’s own idea. Wint, then, he must fight. He thought of Wint; and he thought of Wint’s father again. There might be a chance to move Wint through his father. “If the boy has any sense of duty,” Kite thought, “he’ll do what his father says.” He forgot that the elder Chase had always been a “dry” man. Politics takes little account of convictions; and Kite clutched at the hope that the elder Chase could change Wint’s mind. Chase had offered him alliance, once; had offered him an alliance against Amos. He should be willing to show his friendliness now. Kite’s eyes lighted with a faintly optimistic glint at the thought; and he took his hat and started forthwith down the street toward the furnace where Chase was to be found during the day. He met a number of men; and he thought they all grinned at him with derision in their eyes. They must know what had happened; must be amused at this plight in which he found himself. The thought roused the anger in Kite, and strengthened him. He went on his way more boldly. By and by, at the end of the street, the smoky black bulk of the furnace loomed before him. Kite did not like the looks of the furnace; there was such an atmosphere of harnessed power about it, and Kite was always a little afraid the power would break its harness. To reach the office, he had to go through the very heart of the monstrous thing. At the beginning of the way, a ten-foot flame hissed out of the very earth itself, at his right hand, so that he shrank past it timidly. Then he must pick his way through a corridor between structures like squat, brick ovens, below which living flame roared in a stream like a racing torrent. He could see this stream of flame. There was nothing to hold it, between the ovens. He trembled with fear that this stream would leap out at him.