Outwardly calmer, the old man was raging, within, more and ever more bitterly, against Armstrong.  On July first, Slade had reported in person that his operators who were trailing the quarry had—­in the night—­discovered in one of his pockets a maple leaf wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief marked “C. J. F.”  Flint, recognizing his daughter’s initials, well-nigh burst a blood-vessel for wrath.  But he instructed Slade not to have the handkerchief abstracted from Armstrong’s possession.  By no sign or hint must the victim be made aware that he was being spied upon.  When the final blow should fall, then (reflected the Billionaire, with devilish satisfaction) all scores would be paid in full, and more than paid.

July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where—­he had already heard—­ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning.  Gabriel counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and celebration had been arranged.  Ordinarily, he would have taken part in the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd.  There could be little danger, thought he, in such a mass.  Despite the recent stringent censorship and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police, a huge gathering was expected.  The big railway and lake-traffic strikes, both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.

“It will be worth seeing,” thought Gabriel, as he stood outside the lodging-house where he had taken a room for the night.  The workers are surely awakening, at last.  The spirit I’ve been meeting, lately, is uglier and more determined than anything I ever used to find, a year or two ago.  It seems to me, if conditions are like this all over the country, the safety-valve is about ready to pop, and the masters had better look out, or some of them are going to land in Hell!

“Yes, I’ll stop over here, one day, and look and listen.  Sorry I can’t take part, but I mustn’t.  My game, now, is to travel underground as it were.  I’ve got a bigger job in view than soap-boxing, just now!”

He ate a simple supper at an “Owl” lunch-cart, totally unaware that, across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come out.  And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the descending sun.