me know you were writing it—why did n't you let me go over it with you?"
"Why? You don't find any mistakes in the English, do you?" Colonel Halket asked anxiously.
"No, oh no. It's very well written. But I should have liked to talk it over with you beforehand."
"I thought there could n't have been any mistakes," Colonel Halket said, with great relief. "You know, when they sent me the proof of it and I read it in print for the first time, I could hardly believe I'd written it; it seemed too—well, too smooth and professional. I said to myself, 'I guess the editor's fixed it up a bit.' So I compared the manuscript with it—and not a word had been changed—not a word. I tell you, I was surprised."
An old man exulting in the discovery of a new thing that he could do, a new achievement—Floyd could not blow cold upon his pleasure now. He looked at his watch and exclaimed,—
"By Jove! Your article was so interesting I had no idea it was as late as this! We 'd better be dressing for dinner, had n't we?"
In the interval, Floyd secured a clearer view of the manner in which his grandfather's published article might complicate the situation at the mills. It was conceivable that Gregg and the other superintendents might resent the somewhat patronizing reference to their "usually cool but now agitated heads;" they might resent being made a text for a public preachment. They would certainly feel that much of their work had been undone, for, notwithstanding Colonel Halket's declaration of a laissez faire policy, his subordinates had for a long time in small ways been endeavoring to discourage the spread of unionism in the mills. Now this authoritative utterance must advance victoriously the cause that Floyd himself had come to regard as dangerous and to be opposed. His contemplated promotion of Hugh Farrell, his rebuke that day to the union delegation from the rod-mill occurred to
