reight handler. The freight agent who was called as a witness
testified as to the good character of the man previously, but he was a
thief. Put to the test it had been proven that he would steal from his
neighbor simply to keep his baby from starving, so he went to the
workhouse, his family went to the poor-house, and the strike went on.

"If you were to ask who is responsible for this strike," said the
philosophic tramp to Patsy, "which has left in its wake only waste,
want, misery, and even murder, the strikers would answer 'the company';
the company, 'the strikers'; and if Congress came in a private car to
investigate, the men on either side would hide behind one another, like
cattle in a storm, and the guilty would escape. The law intends to
punish, but the law finds it so hard to locate the real criminals in a
great soulless corporation, or in a conglomeration of organizations
whose aggregate membership reaches into the hundreds of thousands, that
the blind goddess grows weary, groping in the dark, and finally falls
asleep with the cry of starving children still ringing in her ears."

Now an officer brought engineer Dan Moran, the alleged dynamiter, into
court for a special hearing. He wore no manacles, but stood erect in the
awful presence of the judge, unfettered and unafraid.

Mr. Alexander, the lawyer for the strikers, having had a hint from Billy
Watchem, the detective, asked that the prisoner be discharged, but the
young man who had been sent down from the office of the prosecuting
attorney, being behind the procession, protested vigorously. In the
midst of a burning argument, in which the old engineer was unmercifully
abused, the youthful attorney was interrupted to receive a message from
the general manager of the Burlington route. Pausing only long enough to
read the signature, the orator continued to pour his argument into the
court until a second messenger arrived with a note from his chief. It
was brief and he read it: "Let go; the house is falling in on you"; and
he let go. It was a long, hard fall, so he thought he would drop a
little at a time. The court was surprised to see the attorney stop short
in what he doubtless considered the effort of his life, and ask that the
prisoner be released on bail. Now the prosecuting attorney glanced at
Mr. Alexander, but that gentleman was looking the other way. "Does that
proposition meet with the approval of the eminent counsel on the other
side?"

"No," said