"You mean he actually fears violence?"
"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin' Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he didn't catch at it."
For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them from the foot of the hill.
Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of Richard Ordway's parting words.
"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand dollars for his mills to-night."
Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat.
"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they are once caught."
Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the darkness.
"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at midnight."