idleness the Union would pay the driver fifty cents a day. Here Quigg
pounded his chest, clenched his fists, and said solemnly, "If capital
once downs the lab'rin' man, we'll all be slaves."

The driver was Carl Nilsson, a Swede, a big, blue-eyed, light-haired
young fellow of twenty-two, a sailor from boyhood, who three years
before, on a public highway, had been picked up penniless and hungry by
Tom Grogan, after the keeper of a sailors' boarding-house had robbed him
of his year's savings. The change from cracking ice from a ship's deck
with a marlinespike, to currying and feeding something alive and warm
and comfortable, was so delightful to the Swede that he had given up the
sea for a while. He had felt that he could ship again at anytime, the
water was so near. As the months went by, however, he, too, gradually
fell under the spell of Tom's influence. She reminded him of the great
Norse women he had read about in his boyhood. Besides all this, he was
loyal and true to the woman who had befriended him, and who had so far
appreciated his devotion to her interests as to promote him from hostler
and driver to foreman of the stables.

Nilsson knew Quigg by sight, for he had seen him walking home with
Jennie from church. His knowledge of English was slight, but it was
enough to enable him to comprehend Quigg's purpose as he talked beside
him on the cart. After some questions about how long the enforced
idleness would continue, he asked suddenly:--

"Who da horse clean when I go 'way?"

"D--n her! let her clean it herself," Quigg answered angrily.

This ended the question for Nilsson, and it very nearly ended the
delegate. Jumping from the cart, Carl picked up the shovel and sprang
toward Quigg, who dodged out of his way, and then took to his heels.

When Nilsson, still white with anger, reached the dock, he related the
incident to Cully, who, on his return home, retailed it to Jennie with
such variety of gesture and intonation that that young lady blushed
scarlet, but whether from sympathy for Quigg or admiration for Nilsson,
Cully was unable to decide.

Quigg's failure to coax away one of Tom's men ended active operations
against Tom, so far as the Union was concerned. It continued to listen
to McGaw's protests, but, with an eye open for its own interests,
replied that if Grogan's men would not be enticed away it could at
present take no further action. His trouble with Tom was an individual
matter, and a little