"You didn't bring me here to tell me this—this fool talk," he cried, striving desperately for calmness.
Hendrie relit his cigar, which had gone out.
"No I didn't, Tug, my boy," he said, glancing over the flame of the match at the man's furious face. "There are other things." He blew the light out, and placed the dead match carefully in an ash tray. "Guess you don't need me to preach sense to a man like you. Still, if I'd a grievance against a man—and," he smiled, "I allow you have reason to feel unfriendly toward me—I should just get right up on my hind legs and hand him all I knew—dead straight. I wouldn't worry with a bum organization of labor to do it. It's unwieldy, it's rarely effective. You leave me free to get out of it, to protect myself. Say, you haven't robbed me of a thing to-night. All you've done is to manure the soil, and do me a service toward next year's crop, which I doubt, when the time comes, if you'll be in a position to hurt."
He crossed over to the window and drew the curtains aside. The red glow of the still burning crop was shining in every direction. The window looked out upon a land of fire, with the house, an oasis in the center of it, cut off by wide "fire breaks," which left it beyond all danger.
"Look," he cried. "It's a pretty sight. Fire in every direction. But, from your point of view, wholly uneffective."
The curtains fell back in their place, and the millionaire returned to the desk. Leyburn had not moved. Like an obstinate child he had refused to look as invited, and Angus's grim face displayed his appreciation of the manner in which Hendrie was, in his own phraseology, "putting him through it."
"Then there's those niggers," the millionaire continued, as soon as he had taken up his position at the desk again. "You told the boys to shoot 'em up to-night." He shook his head sadly. "Quite ridiculous. Quite impossible. You should have thought more—and hated less. Angus has paid 'em off, and they're quitting right now, as fast as panic can chase 'em. You see, there's no more work here now for black or white for six months to come. All the hands are out of a job, whether they like it or not. When they've starved till their bones are rattling they'll come back to us on their hands and knees. You've done that. It's the way you raise their wages. The way you better their lot. Pshaw! you're like the rest of 'em, only you're worse, because you're legally dishonest, too. So long as the papers are full of you, so long as your workers cheer you to the echo, and you can sign orders giving the world permission to go on moving around in space, so long as your pocketbooks are fattened by the blind ignorance of those you represent, what in hell do you care for the worker? I'm sick to death of you and your rotten kind. To do good there must be honesty in you—and there's none. You make the worker suffer weeks and weeks of misery and hardship, goading him into the belief that he is all-powerful, for some paltry betterment that does not begin to make up for what he has suffered. You never let him rest and prosper. You drive him, year after year, till, by the time he ends up his miserable life in poverty, he can reckon a large proportion of it has been spent in wilful idleness which has helped further to rob him of any adequate provision for his wife and children. It makes me sick. As long as the world lasts labor must be the under dog. You cannot lift labor if it cannot lift itself. Brute force must remain subservient to brain. With your unclean human hands you are striving to drive labor to a vain effort to overthrow one of the greatest laws of all life."
For the moment Hendrie seemed to have lost himself in the interest of his own subject, but he was abruptly brought back to the affairs in hand by the smiling sarcasm of his prisoner.
"Quite a lecture," he cried. "Say, Leo——"
But he reckoned without the loyal Scot behind him.