Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that
held his hat as if to make a protective gesture, but failed to
carry it out; and his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman,
however, seemed to feel that something ought to be said.

"Our glue-works, hell!" he remarked. "I guess we won't HAVE no
glue-works over here not very long, if we got to compete with the
sized thing you got over there!"

Lamb chuckled. "I kind of had some such notion," he said. "You
see, Virgil, I couldn't exactly let you walk off with it like
swallering a pat o' butter, now, could I? It didn't look exactly
reasonable to expect me to let go like that, now, did it?"

Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his throat. "Do
you--would you step into my office a minute, Mr. Lamb?"

"Why, certainly I'm willing to have a little talk with you," the
old gentleman said, as he followed his former employee indoors,
and he added, "I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got
THAT up, over yonder, Virgil!"

Adams threw open the door of the rough room he called his office,
having as justification for this title little more than the fact
that he had a telephone there and a deal table that served as a
desk. "Just step into the office, please," he said.

Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair before it, at the
telephone, and at the partition walls built of old boards, some
covered with ancient paint and some merely weatherbeaten, the