I've nothing to say against legitimate dealing, but it's another thing when these soft-handed, over-fed-men suck the blood out of every minor industry and make their pile by the grinding down of a host of struggling toilers.

By next settling day one or two of them are going to feel my hand." He reached out for his hat, rather red in face.
"If I've any other reasons, they don't concern you," he added in a different tone.

"All I expect from you is to do your part judiciously, and, as a matter of fact, it will have to be done that way." He went out, and left Wannop sitting with the light of a somewhat grim satisfaction in his eyes.
In the meanwhile, Weston went moodily back to his hotel, and spent an unpleasant hour or two before he proceeded irresolutely toward Stirling's house.

He realized that this was in some respects most unwise of him, but he was going away on the morrow and he felt that he could not go without a word with Ida.
She was sitting near the fire, which burned upon the open hearth, when he was shown into a daintily-furnished room.

After a swift glance at him she rose and followed the maid to the door.
"I cannot receive anybody else just now," she said.
Then she came back and sat down not far from him, feeling that there was a crisis on hand, for, though the man's manner was quiet, there was trouble in his face.
"You have something to tell me.