"Oh,"—Luke could have laughed—"so Stein told you that, too, did he?"
"Never mind what he told me. The point is: his people can help you if you'll only acknowledge defeat, now that you're defeated. They can give you back all you've lost, and nobody else can."
"And if I don't admit I'm whipped, they'll whip me some more?"
"They'll finish what they've begun, Huber; they will wipe out the Business, too."
"I'm sorry," said Luke—"very sorry for you, I mean. But there's no use arguing: I won't give in."
Forbes exhausted his every resource. He pleaded for the business, for Luke, for Betty. For an hour he sent the squadrons of his appeal against the impregnable wall of Luke's determination.
"What have you to gain?" he reiterated; and once he said: "The worst of the crowd is dead, anyhow."
Luke was not listening. He was saying to himself:
"What is it I am to do next? There is still a little money left to my account at the bank. It will keep me for a year and mother for a year—and then? I'm making Forbes hold out against the trust, and if he does hold out his mill is doomed. No hope there! Can I go back to the Law? I can't, because the Law is just what the Church is. The Law was made by the powerful, it is interpreted by their paid servants and administered by their slaves. It is a game devised by the crafty powerful to cheat the simple weak. The last five years have proved that to me, and I'm ashamed that it took me so long to learn. Betty——"
He did not dare to think of Betty. He thought rather of the open country, of the smell of the earth on which he had been lying twenty-four hours ago, and the coolness and freedom of the white clouds against that sky of blue....