teous,
thoughtful fellow to help her into her cloak and out of her troubles.
The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills
have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her
Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was
Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on the spot she
wouldn't have.

More and more, however, she recognized in Elmendorf the evil genius of
the family, and implored Mart to have no more to do with him, whereat
Mart laughed wildly. "Just you wait a bit, missy," he declaimed. "The
day is coming when capitalists and corporations will bow down to him as
they have to the Goulds and Vanderbilts in the past. I tell you, in less
than two months, if they don't come to our terms, if they refuse to
listen to our dictation not one wheel will turn from one end of this
country to the other. We'll tie up the business of the whole United
States, by God! That's what'll happen to capital."

"And then what will happen to us, Mart,--to you, your wife and
babies,--to your mother and to me? Where will the money come from?"

"Oh, there's money enough--more than enough--millions more than
enough--to feed and clothe and keep us all in luxury--tied up in the
coffers of those bond-holders, and when the men whose hands have made it
get their hands once more on it----"

"Mart, Mart, your head is crazed with whiskey," laughed Jenny, sadly.
"No wonder capital is being withdrawn from us; no wonder the gold is
going back to Europe. People who have it dare not invest in communities
where the employees are allowed to talk as they are here. If I had a
million to invest, do you think I'd venture it where the workmen openly
threatened they'd stop every wheel throughout the land? You are killing
your own prospects, Mart, simply to cripple theirs."

"I don't care. What do you know of such things, anyhow? I don't mean to
stand by and see my brothers starving and swindled day by day down there
at Pullman."

"Who have the greater claims, Mart, those whom you call your brothers
down there at Pullman, or your wife and children here at home? I feel
for those people just as much as you do,--more probably,--but your duty
lies here."

"Oh, that's right. Stand by your swell friends, and toss it into my
teeth that I and mine are sponging on you for a living, and you want
your money. Make a man more desperate than he is by your nagging and
fault-finding. Drive a fellow to striki