. It was as vivid and fervent
a temperance-lecture as ever was given in Yerbury.

About ten in the morning Jack Darcy returned home dead tired, as much
with the excitement as the fatigue, took a bath, and went to bed.

The Yerbury authorities looked sharply about them that day. The strikers
were orderly and quiet, but they had lost ground. "The Evening
Transcript" deprecated all this sort of business, and for once had no
fling about the "Utopian theory of co-operation." But "The Leader" of
the morning came out strongly in praise of the good order, forbearance,
and _esprit de corps_ of Hope Mills, and called Mr. Darcy "our young and
enterprising citizen, whom, we doubt not, we shall hear of in higher
positions in life, which he has proved himself eminently worthy to
fill."

There was no great lament made about Boyd's Row or Keppler's saloon,
except for the sad casualty it had caused; but the dastardly attack on
Mrs. Connelly, and the fiendish attempt to burn Hope Mills, met with the
severest condemnation.

Maverick came around to the Darcys that evening. "I fancy I have found
your man, Jack," he began. "Mrs. Stixon called me in towards night,
saying Jem had been on a spree, and was dreadfully beaten. I found one
side of his face scratched and bruised, and bits of gravel still
adhering to the flesh. The right arm, on the same side, has one bone
broken, and his shoulder is dislocated. He said he fell off of a stoop,
and is dreadfully sullen. I asked him what stoop, but he would not tell.
Do you remember which way the man fell?"

Jack thought a moment. "On the right side, Maverick, away from me, or I
should have seen his face. Just such a size man as Jem Stixon, too,"
with a satisfied nod.

"What will you do about it?"

Jack took two or three turns across the floor. "See here, Maverick, we
will not do any thing. You cure the poor fellow, and I think he will
never try to damage Hope Mills again. I can hardly forgive him Bruno,
though."

"If I were Sylvie Barry,"--he never called her Mrs. Lawrence when
speaking of her,--"I should say, 'Jack, you are an angel.'"

Jack flushed. "Masculine angels!" he laughed.

"Well, wasn't there Gabriel and a host of them? Why, Jack, they were
_all_ masculine!"

There was no need for earthly justice to meddle with Jem Stixon. His arm
inflamed: he had led a hard life late years, and his system was in bad
order. He would not listen to amputation until it was too late, and in
less