There was a slight pause. Craig's lowering look had been watching the other curiously. The emotion in the older man's voice had touched no chord of response in him. Rather it roused contempt--not for the son, whom he considered a brainless weakling, but for what seemed to him an arrant attempt to evade the issue that stood so sharply and insistently in his own mind. To him no man's motives were pure. The man before him had been not the Trust's servant, but its creature. Had not the Corporation, behind all, set him on his high seat? Was he fool enough to think that he--Craig--was not aware of that? It had expected him to pay in kind, when the need arose, as now it had. And did the other think to throw dust in his eyes with such mawkish sentimentalism--to evade this old tacit obligation by a flimsy pretence of moral scruple? Craig spoke: "And--the Corporation. What did it say? Eh?" "The president of the board came to see me. He was good enough to ask me to reconsider. But I had made my choice." Craig leaned forward, his arm on the little inlaid desk beside him. "Let me finish," he said with deliberate meaning. "The board, accepting that decision with the keenest regret, desired to make your retirement the occasion for showing in a tangible way its appreciation of your long and faithful service. A seat on the Supreme Bench being vacant, the Directorate proposed, unless your taste pointed otherwise, to use such influence as it might possess, to gain for your name the consideration in that connection which it deserved." A look of surprise had crossed the Judge's face as he began. A sensitive flush swept it as he ended. "If you imply that my seat was offered me, Mr. Craig, even tentatively, at that time, or in that connection, you are in error!" Craig's sneer was open now. There was no more pretence. "If not in so many words, in effect! Pshaw! Do you mean to pretend you would have had that appointment if the Trust hadn't backed you for it? It owned the state bag and baggage then, as it does now--and as it will continue to do! It put you on the Bench and it has kept you there, and you know it!" The Judge was on his feet now, his flush faded to pallor. He deigned no answer to the flung assertion. "What is your object in coming to me to say this?" His voice was deep and resonant. "Just this!" Craig lifted his arm, his big fist clenched, his eyes narrowed. "You were the Trust's counsel and confident for twenty years--till it put you where you are now! Do you think it did that for nothing? It _made_ you, Beverly Allen! And now it has reason to believe that you intend to knife it in the back--to drag the ermine it put on your shoulders into an incendiary hue-and-cry started by demagogues who aim to destroy a great industry!" "What do you mean, sir?" The Judge's tone was icy.