Sam wondered why he had been invited. It was a soft October day and in the ravine he sat looking at the trees splashed with colour and breathing deeply of the air, his whole body relaxed, grateful for the day of rest. Jake came and sat beside him. “What are you?” he asked bluntly. “We know you are no working man.” Sam told him a half-truth. “You are right enough about that; I have money enough not to have to work. I used to be a business man. I sold guns. But I have a disease and the doctors have told me that if I do not work out of doors part of me will die.” The man from his own gang who had invited him on the trip came up to them, bringing Sam a foaming glass of beer. He shook his head. “The doctor says it will not do,” he explained to the two men. The red-haired man called Jake began talking. “We are going to have a fight with Ed,” he said. “That’s what we came up here to talk about. We want to know where you stand. We are going to see if we can’t make him pay as well for the work here as men are paid for the same work in Chicago.” Sam lay back upon the grass. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead. If I can help I will. I’m not so fond of Ed.” The men began talking among themselves. Jake, standing among them, read aloud a list of names among which was the name Sam had written on the register at Ed’s hotel. “It’s a list of the names of men we think will stick together and vote together on the bond issue,” he explained, turning to Sam. “Ed’s in that and we want to use our votes to scare him into giving us what we want. Will you stay with us? You look like a fighter.” Sam nodded and getting up joined the men about the beer kegs. They began talking of Ed and of the money he had made in the town. “He’s done a lot of town work here and there’s been graft in all of it,” explained Jake emphatically. “It’s time he was being made to do the right thing.” While they talked Sam sat watching the men’s faces. They did not seem vile to him now as they had seemed that first evening in the hotel office. He began thinking of them silently and alertly at work all day long, surrounded by such influences as Ed and Bill, and the thought sweetened his opinion of them. “Look here,” he said, “tell me of this matter. I was a business man before I came here and I may be able to help you fellows get what you want.” Getting up, Jake took Sam’s arm and they walked down the ravine, Jake explaining the situation in the town. “The game,” he said, “is to make the taxpayers pay for a millrace to be built for the development of the water power in the river and then, by a trick, to turn it over to a private company. Bill and Ed are both in the deal and they are working for a Chicago man named Crofts. He’s been up here at the hotel with Bill talking to Ed. I’ve figured out what they are up to.” Sam sat down upon a log and laughed heartily.