“The enemy of the world, of more particularly the worker is the—­CAPITALIST!”

The words were hurled from the platform of the recreation room at the heads of the listening throng below and reached the open window just as Lawton and his chief came up to it.  There was applause following this profound announcement, and Skert turned on his companion.

“Well?” he demanded, in a tone of biting triumph.

They had reached the window at the psychological moment.  Nothing could have suited his purpose better.

Bat turned away abruptly.  It was as if some fierce emotion made it impossible for him to remain another second.  His heavy brows depressed, and his deep-set eyes narrowed to gimlet holes.  Skert pursued him.  Once clear of the window, and beyond earshot, Bat flung his reply with all the passionate force of his fighting nature.

“The lousy swine!” he cried.  “I’ll close that place sure as—­hell.”

Skert shook his head as they walked on.

“No, you won’t,” he said.  “Guess you aren’t crazy.  You’ll talk this over with Sternford.  And when you’ve talked it some, you’ll keep that place running, and let them talk.  It’s best that way.  But I’ve got tab of most of the speakers, and I’ve located where they come from.  Most of them have sometime worked for the Skandinavia.  Maybe that’s the reason of their talk.  Maybe even Skandinavia’s glad they’re talking that way here on Labrador.  I don’t know.  But—­well, I’ll have to quit you here.  They’re setting up the two big new machines, and it don’t do leaving them long.  So long.  Anything else you need to know about that recreation room, why, I guess I can hand it to you.”

* * * * *

Bull Sternford laid the telegram aside while a shadowy smile hovered about his firm lips.  Then he settled himself back in his chair, and gave himself up to the thoughtful contemplation of the brilliant sunlight, and the perfect, steely azure of the sky beyond the window opposite him.

The change in the man was almost magical.  The hot-headed, determined, fighting lumber-jack whom Father Adam had rescued from furious homicide had hidden himself under something deeper than the veneer which the modest suit of conventional life provides.  It was the subtle change that comes from within which had transformed him.  It was in his eyes.  In the set of his jaws.  It was in the man’s whole poise.  His resources of spiritual power; his mental force; his virility of personality.  All these things were concentrated.  They were no longer sprawling, groping, seeking the great purpose of his life as they had been in the lumber camp of the Skandinavia.

A feeling akin to triumph filled the man’s heart as he gazed out upon the pleasant light of Labrador’s late summer day.  In something like twelve months he had thrust leagues along the road he meant to travel.  And his progress had been of a whirlwind nature.  It had been work, desperate, strenuous work.  It had been the double labour of intensive study combined with the necessary progress in the schemes laid down for the future of Sachigo.  It had only been possible to a man of his amazing faculties, combined with the fact that Bat Harker and the mournful Skert Lawton had left him free from the clogging detail of the mill organisation and routine.