“Mr. Bannon,” she said, when he had finished dictating a letter to the office, “I want to tell you about that man that was hurt.”

Bannon tried not to smile at the nervous, almost breathless way in which she opened the conversation.  He saw that, whatever it was, it seemed to her very important, and he settled comfortably on the table, leaning back against the wall with his legs stretched out before him.  She had turned on her stool.

“You mean the hoist man?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Max goes over to see him sometimes.  We’ve been trying to help make him comfortable—­”

“Oh,” said Bannon; “it’s you that’s been sending those things around to him.”

She looked at him with surprise.

“Why, how did you know?”

“I heard about it.”

Hilda hesitated.  She did not know exactly how to begin.  It occurred to her that perhaps Bannon was smiling at her eager manner.

“Max was there last night and he said the man had changed all around.  He’s been friendly, you know, and grateful”—­she had forgotten herself again, in thinking of her talk with Max—­“and he’s said all the time that he wasn’t going to make trouble—­” She paused.

“Yes, I know something about that,” said Bannon.  “The lawyers always get after a man that’s hurt, you know.”

“But last night he had changed all around.  He said he was going to have you arrested.  He thinks Max has been trying to buy him off with the things we’ve sent him.”

Bannon whistled.

“So our Mr. Grady’s got his hands on him!”

“That’s what Max and I thought, but he didn’t give any names.  He wouldn’t take the jelly.”

“I’m glad you told me,” said Bannon, swinging his legs around and sitting up.  “It’s just as well to know about these things.  Grady’s made him think he can make a good haul by going after me, poor fool—­he isn’t the man that’ll get it.”

“Can he really stop the work?” Hilda asked anxiously.

“Not likely.  He’ll probably try to make out a case of criminal carelessness against me, and get me jerked up.  He ought to have more sense, though.  I know how many sticks were on that hoist when it broke.  I’ll drop around there tonight after dinner and have a talk with him.  I’d like to find Grady there—­but that’s too good to expect.”

Hilda had stepped down from the stool, and was looking out through the half-cleaned window at a long train of freight cars that was clanking in on the Belt Line.

“That’s what I wanted to see you about most,” she said slowly.  “Max says he’s been warned that you’ll come around and try to buy him off, and it won’t go, because he can make more by standing out.”

“Well,” said Bannon, easily, amused at her unconscious drop into Max’s language, “there’s usually a way of getting after these fellows.  We’ll do anything within reason, but we won’t be robbed.  I’ll throw Mr. Grady into the river first, and hang him up on the hoist to dry.”