Mr. Horace Boyce returned to Thessaly the next morning and drove at once to his father’s house. There, after a longer and more luxurious bath than usual, he breakfasted at his leisure, and then shaved and dressed himself with great care. He had brought some new clothes from New York, and as he put them on he did not regret the long detour to the metropolis, both in going to and coming from Pittsburg, which had been made in order to secure them. The frock coat was peculiarly to his liking. No noble dandy in all the West End of London owed his tailor for a more perfectly fitting garment. It was not easy to decide as to the neckwear which should best set off the admirable upper lines of this coat, but at last he settled on a lustreless, fine-ribbed tie of white silk, into which he set a beautiful moonstone pin that Miss Kate had once praised. Decidedly, the _ensemble_ left nothing to be desired. Horace, having completely satisfied himself, took off the coat again, went down-stairs in his velveteen lounging-jacket, and sought out his father in the library, which served as a smoking-room for the two men. The General sat in one chair, with his feet comfortably disposed on another, and with a cup of coffee on still a third at his side. He was reading that morning’s Thessaly _Banner_, through passing clouds of cigar-smoke. His brow was troubled. “Hello, you’re back, are you?” was his greeting to his son. “I see the whole crowd of workmen in your rolling-mills decided last night not to submit to the new scale; unanimous, the paper says. Seen it?” “No, but I guessed they would,” said Horace, nonchalantly. “They can all be damned.” The General turned over his paper. “There’s an editorial,” he went on, “taking the workmen’s side, out and out. Says there’s something very mysterious about the whole business. Winds up with a hint that steps will be taken to test the legality of the trust, and probe the conspiracy that underlies it. Those are the words--‘probe the conspiracy.’ Evidently, you’re going to have John Fairchild in your wool. He’s a good fighter, once you get him stirred up.” “He can be damned, too,” said Horace, taking a chair and lighting a cigar. “These free-trade editors make a lot of noise, but they don’t do anything else. They’re merely blue-bottle flies on a window-pane--a deuce of a nuisance to nervous people, that’s all. I’m not nervous, myself.” The General smiled with good-humored sarcasm at his offspring. “Seems to me it wasn’t so long ago that you were tarred with the same brush yourself,” he commented. “Most fellows are free-traders until it touches their own pockets, or rather until they get something in their pockets to be touched. Then they learn sense,” replied Horace. “You can count them by thousands,” said the General. “But what of the other poor devils--the millions of consumers who pay through the nose, in order to keep those pockets full, eh? They never seem to learn sense.”