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THOSE WHO TOIL
ing eyes, at the blotting-pad. How the girl's rant had echoed his son's words of an evening ago ! Was it the voice of the younger generation speaking — telling him that the Iron Age was over and the Age of the Brotherhood of Man begun ? He shrugged his shoulders, impatient of sentiment. The boy was a raw college youth, with crude notions and absurdly impractical ideals, and the girl — a dissatisfied member of the working-class —
spotted and caked the men's clothes, stiffened their hair, oozed from their very pores. As Jane spoke, sullen mutters rose from their throats. One Jake Morgan, acknowledged leader of the district — a thick-set fellow with protruding jaw and hairy, ape hands — sprang to his feet as Jane's voice ceased. He placed one dirty paw proprietorially on the girl's flannel-covered shoulder, dwarfing her by his mere animal bulk, so that, tall and
AS JAXE SPOKE, SULLEN MUTTERS ROSE FROM THEIR THROATS
dangerous, uncontrolled ; yet she had marvelous eyes. He passed a fretful hand over his forehead. "She would like to have murdered me," he muttered, "but there are too many of her class in the world. I wont prosecute. It's bad policy. Let her go!"
And so it came about that a week later Jane Brett stood in the dim, packed room in the rear of Tim's Place, and told a sullen audience of oil-workers of her visit to the Big Boss of the Wells. The air of the room was fetid with odors of sweat and uttcleanliness and drenched with the rank, acrid tang of the oil that
gaunt as she was, she looked ethereallv frail.
"Laughs at us, does he, d — n him !': he roared, thick gills empurpled with his rage. "Well, then, boys, let's give him something to laugh at. If goin' hungr) an' ragged, an' our kids dyin' like flies from fever his filthy houses gives 'em, is funny, think what a joke a burnin' oilwell would be !"
Savage laughter stretched the slack mouths into wolf-snarls. A woman in the press shrieked hysterically :
"Glory ! That's the way to talk, Jake ! Glory to God !"