"Herzog," said he, calmly and with cold emphasis, "listen to this."
"Get out! Get your time, I tell you, and go!" repeated the bully. "To Hell with you! Clear out of here!"
"I'm going," the young man answered. "But before I do, remember this; you grazed death, just now. Well for you, Herzog, almighty well for you, my temper didn't best me. For remember, you struck me and called me 'thief'—and that sort of thing can't be forgotten, ever, even though we live a thousand years.
"Remember, Herzog—not now, but sometime. Remember that one word—sometime! That's all!"
With no further speech, and while Herzog still stood there by the shop door, sneering at him, Armstrong turned and passed out. A few minutes later he had been paid off, had packed his knapsack with his few belongings, and was outside the big palisade, striding along the hard and glaring road toward the station.
"I did it," his one overmastering thought was. "Thank heaven, I did it! I held my temper and my tongue, didn't kill that spawn of Hell, and saved the whole situation. I'm out of a job, true enough, and out of the plant; but after all, I'm free—and I know what's in the wind!
"There's yet hope. There'll be a way, a way to do this work! What a man must do, he can do!"
Up came Armstrong's chin, as he walked. His shoulders squared, with strength and purpose, and his stride swung into the easy machine gait that had already carried him so many thousand miles along the hard and bitter highways of the world.
As he strode away, on the long road toward he knew not what, words seemed to form and shape in his strengthened and refortified mind—words for long years forgotten—words that he once had heard at his mother's knee:
"He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city!"