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Property from the standpoint of its influence in checking natural self-expansion and from the standpoint of personal and inherent right is another institution that comes in for straight and cross-arm jabs, now to the stomach, now to the head, but seldom sparring for breath.
Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had few wires.
Of a sudden a lariat shot up over the painted cross-arm, and dropped, the two ends dangling free; and, understanding it all, the spectators again became silent. Everything moved like clockwork. From somewhere in the darkness a bare-backed pony was produced and brought directly under the dangling rope. Astride him a dark-bearded figure with hands tied behind his back was placed and firmly held.
There extended down the center of the room, though filling but a small portion of its vast extent, the grand table provided for the banquet, a reach of snowy linen, broken at the upper end by the arm of an abbreviated cross. At each end of this cross-arm stood magnificent candelabra, repeated at intervals along the greater extension of the board.
With a gesture Bruce stopped his belligerent advance. "Try the next one, Jennings," he said quietly. Once more the slack was taken up and the wire grew taut so taut it would have twanged like a fiddle-string if it had been struck. Jennings did not give Smaltz the sign to stop even when the cross-arm cracked. Without a word of protest Bruce watched the stout four-by-five splinter and drop off.
They turned off at the cross-arm of the Canal towards the Great Trianon; they talked, again dutifully in the spirit of the place, about Madame de Maintenon. They differed on this subject just enough to enjoy discussing it. But Sylvia shook her head. "I know how he felt. He had to have her, once he'd found her. She was the only person in all his world he could depend on."
Smaltz's face wore an expressive grin as he put his strength on the rope of the block-and-tackle, which gave him the pull of a four-horse team. Bruce heard the cross-arm splinter as he came up the trail through the brush. Jennings turned to Woods and said offensively: "Old as you are, I guess I kin learn you somethin' yet." The carpenter's face had turned white.
The correctness or incorrectness of his contention concerning the cross-arm seemed of less importance than the fact that Bruce's interference had impaired his dignity belittled him in the eyes of the crew. "Am I the constructin' ingineer, or ain't I? If I am, I'm entitled to some respect." More than ever Jennings looked like a bear pouting in a trap. "What's your dignity got to do with it?"
She misses the seat of his pants by a fraction of an inch, and as he reaches the first cross-arm out of her reach, and drapes his form acrosst it, the reason for her sudden animosity towards him is explained. A glass jar falls out of one of his hip pockets and is dashed to fragments on the cruel bricks far below, and its contents is then seen to be peanut butter.
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