“Do you know who that is?” asked Jimmie’s companion on the box.  “That’s Lacey Granitch.”

Jimmie started, experiencing a thrill to the soles of his ragged shoes.  Lacey Granitch!  In the four years that the little machinist had worked for the Empire, he had never caught a glimpse of the young lord of Leesville—­something which may easily be believed, for the young lord considered Leesville “a hole of a town”, and honoured it with his presence only once or twice a year.  But his spirit brooded over it; he was to Leesville a mythological figure, either of wonder and awe, or of horror, according to the temperament of the contemplator.  One day “Wild Bill” had arisen in the local, and held aloft a page from the “magazine supplement” of one of the metropolitan “yellows”.  There was an account of how Lacey Granitch had broken the hearts of seven chorus-girls by running away with an eighth.  He fairly “ate ’em alive”, according to the account; in order to give an idea of the atmosphere in which the young hero abode, the whirl of delight which was his life, the artist of the Sunday supplement had woven round the border of the page a maze of feminine ankles and calves in a delirium of lingerie; while at the top was a supper-table with champagne-corks popping, and a lady clad in inadequate veils dancing amid the dishes.

This had happened while the local was in the midst of an acrimonious controversy over “Section Six”.  Should the Socialist party bar from its membership those who advocated sabotage, violence and crime?  Young Norwood was pleading for orderly methods of social reconstruction; and here stood “Wild Bill”, ripping to shreds the reputation of the young plutocrat of the Empire Shops.  “That’s what you geezers are sweating for!  That’s why you’ve got to be good, and not throw monkey-wrenches in the machinery—­so the seven broken-hearted chorus-girls can drown their sorrows in champagne!”

And now here was the hero of all these romantic escapades, forsaking the white lights of Broadway, and coming home to help the old man keep his contracts.  He stood in the seat of the automobile, glancing this way and that, swiftly, like a hunter on the alert for dangerous game.  His dark eyes roamed here and there, his proud face was pale with anger, his tall, perfectly groomed figure was eloquent of mastership, of command.  He was imperious as a young Caesar, terrible in his vengeance; and poor Jimmie, watching him, was torn between two contradictory emotions.  He hated him—­hated him with a deadly and abiding hatred.  But also he admired him, marvelled at him, cringed before him.  Lacey was a wanton, a cursing tyrant, a brutal snob; but also he was the master, the conqueror, the proud, free, rich young aristocrat, for whom all the rest of humanity existed.  And Jimmie Higgins was a poor little worm of a proletarian, with nothing but his labour-power to sell, trying by sheer force of his will to lift himself out of his slave-psychology!