“I had a little conversation with you the other day, Mr. Peterson.  I called to see you in the interests of the men, the men that are working for you—­working like galley slaves they are, every man of them.  It’s shameful to a man that’s seen how they’ve been treated by the nigger drivers that stands over them day and night.”  He was speaking in a loud voice, with the fluency of a man who is carefully prepared.  There was none of the bitterness or the ugliness in his manner that had slipped out in his last talk with Bannon, for he knew that a score of laborers were within hearing, and that his words would travel, as if by wire, from mouth to mouth about the building and the grounds below.  “I stand here, Mr. Peterson, the man chosen by these slaves of yours, to look after their rights.  I do not ask you to treat them with kindness, I do not ask that you treat them as gentlemen.  What do I ask?  I demand what’s accorded to them by the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, that says even a nigger has more rights than you’ve given to these men, the men that are putting money into your pocket, and Mr. Bannon’s pocket, and the corporation’s pocket, by the sweat of their brows.  Look at them; will you look at them?” He waved his arm toward the nearest group, who had stopped working and were listening; and then, placing a cigar in his mouth and tilting it upward, he struck a match and sheltered it in his hands, looking over it for a moment at Peterson.

The night boss saw by this time that Grady meant business, that his speech was preliminary to something more emphatic, and he knew that he ought to stop it before the laborers should be demoralized.

“You can’t do that here, Mister,” said Max, over Peterson’s shoulder, indicating the cigar.

Grady still held the match, and looked impudently across the tip of his cigar.  Peterson took it up at once.

“You’ll have to drop that,” he said.  “There’s no smoking on this job.”

The match had gone out, and Grady lighted another.

“So that’s one of your rules, too?” he said, in the same loud voice.  “It’s a wonder you let a man eat.”

Peterson was growing angry.  His voice rose as he talked.

“I ain’t got time to talk to you,” he said.  “The insurance company says there can’t be no smoking here.  If you want to know why, you’d better ask them.”

Grady blew out the match and returned the cigar to his pocket, with an air of satisfaction that Peterson could not make out.

“That’s all right, Mr. Peterson.  I didn’t come here to make trouble.  I come here as a representative of these men”—­he waved again toward the laborers—­“and I say right here, that if you’d treated them right in the first place, I wouldn’t be here at all.  I’ve wanted you to have a fair show.  I’ve put up with your mean tricks and threats and insults ever since you begun—­and why?  Because I wouldn’t delay you and hurt