After considerable thought, and several written attempts, he completed the message. But it was not altogether satisfactory. For some moments he sat considering it, and, in the midst of his cogitations, his eye lit upon his unfolded copy of the Winnipeg Daily Times.
It was lying on the top of his desk. He always received the paper a day late, but it was his custom to read it every morning, immediately after his breakfast. This morning it had lain in its place neglected by reason of the coming of the delegation from the farm workers. Now he picked it up without another thought. His interest in the world's finance was far too deep to permit of any further neglect.
He turned the financial page and scanned it eagerly. Then, his appetite in this direction appeased, he idly turned over to the general news.
In a moment he was sitting up alert. In a moment all thoughts of finance, and everything else, were banished from his mind, and his whole interest became absorbed in what he read. The top headline was in vast type, and half a column was devoted to lesser "scare" headlines.
GENERAL RAILROAD STRIKE
THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY
With hungry eyes he read down the list of inconveniences and terrors by which, the paper informed the public, they were beset. Then below this he read on into the lesser type, and found the filling out of the "scare" headings in picturesque, not to say lurid, journalese. This was all for the unsophisticated, the simple, and warned them that the bubble of civilization had burst as effectually as if it had been made of soap.
Angus read it all, and it impressed him. Not, perhaps, as the editor intended, but his keen mind saw through the embellishments and detected the painful truth of the facts underneath. The possibilities were enormous. He pictured the state of chaos he and Hendrie had so often discussed, which might occur in a vast country, such as Canada, with a simple trunk route of communication running through it.
Further, his mind flew to the coming of the harvest. It was less than two weeks off. In a moment the possibilities piled up in his mind till he began to think that perhaps the picturesque journalist was right, a great and terrible national disaster was upon the country.
In the midst of it all he suddenly remembered his message to Hendrie. It was a request for him to return without delay. The memory of it made him promptly turn to the paragraph relating to passenger transport. It was brief, but very definite.
"The strikers hold the track from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and it is understood that if the railroad company attempts to transport either passengers or freight, under military escort, at a given signal the permanent way will be torn up at hundreds of different points all along the line. Thus, even the mails will be held up. The intention of the strikers is to paralyze the entire trade of the country, and, since the numbers of police and troops in the country are utterly inadequate to protect the thousands of miles of permanent way, it seems more than likely the strikers' orders will have to be implicitly obeyed, or a reign of anarchy will set in. It seems impossible to believe that here in the twentieth century," etc., etc.