from an
aesthetic point of view. "Such a coup as that would tell tremendously in
a play."

"That was vile treason," said Lindau in German to March. "He's an
infamous traitor! I cannot stay here. I must go."

He struggled to rise, while March held him by the coat, and implored
him under his voice: "For Heaven's sake, don't, Lindau! You owe it to
yourself not to make a scene, if you come here." Something in it all
affected him comically; he could not help laughing.

The others were discussing the matter, and seemed not to have noticed
Lindau, who controlled himself and sighed: "You are right. I must have
patience."

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, "Pity your Pinkertons couldn't have given
them a few shots before they left."

"No, that wasn't necessary," said Dryfoos. "I succeeded in breaking up
the union. I entered into an agreement with other parties not to employ
any man who would not swear that he was non-union. If they had attempted
violence, of course they could have been shot. But there was no fear
of that. Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut one another's
throats in the long run."

"But sometimes," said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching
throughout for a chance to mount his hobby again, "they make a good
deal of trouble first. How was it in the great railroad strike of '77?"

"Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel," said
Fulkerson. "But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyze
the industries of a country like this generally get left in the end."

"Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always. But it's the
exceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected. And a
little reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always
a danger of the exceptional in your system. The fact is, those fellows
have the game in their own hands already. A strike of the whole body of
the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlantic
seaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given
points, and your government couldn't move a man over the roads without
the help of the engineers."

"That is so," said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of
the conjecture. He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as
something already accomplished.

"Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?"
said Fulkerson. "It would be a card."

"Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,"