Mark, Luke, and John, that
I will thrash the hide off him next spring--if I don't forget it."

Farnham went home, mounted his horse, and rode about the city to see
what progress the strike was making. There was little disorder visible
on the surface of things. The "sections" had evidently not ordered a
general cessation of labor; and yet there were curious signs of
demoralization, as if the spirit of work was partially disintegrating
and giving way to something not precisely lawless, but rather listless.
For instance, a crowd of workmen were engaged industriously and, to all
appearance, contentedly upon a large school-building in construction. A
group of men, not half their number, approached them and ordered them
to leave off work. The builders looked at each other and then at their
exhorters in a confused fashion for a moment, and ended by obeying the
summons in a sullen and indifferent manner. They took off their aprons,
went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and
went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances
of the master-builder. A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like
a burlesque of the last performance. Several men were at work in a hole
in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the
surface. A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black's box slung
over his shoulder, came up and shouted, "You ---- ---- rats, come out
of that, or we'll knock the scalps off'n you." The men, without even
looking to see the source of the summons, threw down their tools and
got out of the hole. The boy had run away; they looked about for a
moment, as if bewildered, and then one of them, a gray-headed Irishman,
said, "Well, we'd better be a lavin' off, if the rest is," and they all
went away.

In this fashion it came about that by nightfall all the squares and
public places were thronged with an idle and expectant crowd, not
actively mischievous or threatening, but affording a vast mass of
inflammable material in case the fire should start in any quarter. They
gathered everywhere in dense groups, exchanging rumors and surmises, in
which fact and fiction were fantastically mingled.

"The rolling-mills all close to-morrow," said a sallow and hollow-eyed
tailor. "That'll let loose twenty thousand men on the town,--big,
brawny fellows. I'm glad my wife is in Clairfield."

"All you know about it! Clairfield is twice as bad off as here. The
machine shops h