man had given the coat to you to sell
because he was sorry for you?"

"Yes, I gave them a description of you and told them the place."

"That was right," said the gentleman, glancing toward the door. "Here
are two dollars; come back here to-morrow and I'll have something more
for you--good-by." And the philanthropist passed out by a side door
which opened on an alley.

The striker gripped the two-dollar bill hard in his hand and started for
the front door. All thought of hunger had left him now, and he was
thinking only of his starving wife, and wondering what would be best for
her to eat. Two or three men in citizens' dress, accompanied by a
policeman, were coming in just as he was going out, but he was looking
at the money and did not notice them. "There goes the thief," said one
of the men, and an officer laid a heavy hand on the striker's shoulder.
The man looked up into the officer's face with amazement, and asked
what the matter was.

"Did you sell an overcoat to this gentleman a little while ago?" asked
the policeman.

"Yes," said the striker glancing down at the two dollars he still held
in his hand.

"Und yer sthold dot coats fum mine vindo'," said a stout man shoving his
fist under the switchman's nose.

"A gentleman gave me the coat in this saloon," urged the striker. "Why,
he was here a moment ago."

"Ah! dot's too tin," laughed the tailor, "tak' 'im avay, Meester
Bleasman, tak' 'im avay," and the miserable man was hurried away to
prison.

That night while the switchman sat in a dark cell his young wife lay
dying of cold and hunger in a fireless room, and when an enterprising
detective came to search the house for stolen goods on the following
morning, he found her there stiff and cold.

Of course no one was to blame in particular, unless it was the
well-dressed gentleman who had "helped" the striker, for no one, in
particular, was responsible for the strike. It may have been the company
and it may have been the brotherhood, or both, but you can't put a
railroad company or a brotherhood in jail.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH

Mr. Watchem's plumber, as might have been expected, had the good taste
to leave his modest lodgings after the downfall and death of his
landlord, and now the widow was left alone with her two children. She
was a gentle soul, who had always been esteemed by her neighbors, but
since her husband's desertion to the enemy, she had been shamefully
slighted. One would have thou