couldn't trust a
committee, and so they all went. There were so many of 'em I couldn't
drive fast, and so I got there about the same time the head of the
column began to arrive. You never saw anything like it in your life.
The strikers had been living out there in a good deal of style--with
sentries and republican government and all that. By the great
hokey-pokey! they couldn't keep it up a minute when their wives came.
They knew 'em too well. They just bulged in without rhyme or rule.
Every woman went for her husband and told him to pack up and go home.
Some of 'em--the artful kind--begged and wheedled and cried; said they
were so tired--wanted their sweethearts again. But the bigger part
talked hard sense,--told 'em their lazy picnic had lasted long enough,
that there was no meat in the house, and that they had got to come home
and go to work. The siege didn't last half an hour. The men brazened it
out awhile; some were rough; told their wives to dry up, and one big
fellow slapped his wife for crying. By jingo! it wasn't half a flash
before another fellow slapped _him_, and there they had it, rolling
over and over on the grass, till the others pulled them apart by the
legs. It was a gone case from the start. They held a meeting off-hand;
the women stayed by to watch proceedings, and, not to make a long story
about it, when I started back a delegation of the strikers came with me
to see the president of the roads, and trains will run through to-night
as usual. I am devilish glad of it, for my part. There is nothing in
Rochester of any force but Rosin-the-Bow, and my horse can show him the
way around the track as if he was getting a dollar an hour as a guide."

"That _is_ good news certainly. Is it generally known in the city?"

"I think not. It was too late for the afternoon papers. I told Jimmy
Nelson, and he tore down to the depot to save what is left of his
fruit. He swore so about it that I was quite shocked."

"What about the mill hands?" asked Farnham.

"The whole thing will now collapse at once. We shall receive the
proposition of the men who left us to-morrow, and re-engage on our own
terms, next day, as many as we want. We shan't be hard on them. But one
or two gifted orators will have to take the road. They are fit for
nothing but Congress, and they can't all go from this district. If I
were you, Arthur, by the way, I wouldn't muster out that army of yours
till to-morrow. But I don't think there will be a