In the broad mirror of Rod's imagination, as he sat waiting, there stood forth successive images of what he meant to accomplish and how. His mind had a faculty of projecting ways and means, not as skeleton ideas, but as extraordinarily vivid pictures of the actual proceeding. He meant to make Andy Hall a commanding officer, the chief of his labor staff. His program took form in flashes, glimpses of men, machinery, stretches of forest, booming grounds,--all energized, dynamic. There was a simplicity that he appreciated in such an undertaking. It was not a matter of finessing, of juggling with pawns and tokens on the commercial chessboard. It was not an affair or stratagems and artifice and cunning. It was honest productive effort, men and machinery moving purposefully under a directing force to supply human needs. He liked that aspect of what he meant to do. Hall was ushered in by Yick Sing. He was in civilian clothes, a small bronze button in his left lapel. Rod led him upstairs to Mary's den. "How long since you were demobbed?" "About two weeks," Hall answered. "Good. I'm going to start a pretty extensive logging show. Will you help me organize it?" "Why pick on me?" Andy inquired languidly. "I know you," Rod replied. "You know logging and loggers. I want a man who will understand what I'm driving at; a man I can trust." "How do you know you can trust me?" "I don't know it. I feel it." A queer expression flickered across Andy's face. "A rebel like me?" he said. "You know what I think about your class--you masters of my class. You people who have control of all the sources of power. Who give us jobs or take them away, according to the dictates of your interest. You understand and believe in class distinctions, don't you?" "I understand them, yes. But character is more important than class." "What is character?" Hall demanded. "Indefinable, in most cases. But it's recognizable. Whatever your situation in life, without this thing we call character you're a dud. It exists independent of class. A leisured environment, quickened intelligence, liberal education, a tradition of uprightness, is supposed to form it. But it crops out, regardless of all these things. It's inherent in some people. It's an individual quality, not a class hall-mark. But I'm getting away from the point. Your social and economic theories have very little to do with your individual function in society as it stands. You don't imagine there's a working-class movement for general betterment on foot in this country that will be imperiled by your working for me as a well-paid assistant in a job I'm undertaking? Do you?" Andy grinned broadly. "Hardly. So long as industry supplies jobs at living wages, everything'll be lovely. Give 'em jobs. That's all they want. They're uncomfortable in their minds unless there's somebody to tell 'em what to do. Tchk!" He shrugged his shoulders.