ce of brotherly love he
forgave Hennesey, but not Williams. It is so much easier to warm toward
a fellow man you have punched than toward one who has punched you.

Mike took John down to his coal-docks, with which he was amassing a
fortune, and explained their workings. A schooner lay at one, and his
gang was unloading her. It was a cold day in November, and their warm
overcoats felt none too warm; yet down in the hold of the schooner were
men bare to the waist, black as negroes with coal dust, save where the
perspiration cleared white channels as it ran down their backs and
breasts--keeping themselves warm with the violence of their exertions.
There were two to each of the three hatches; and there were six others
on the dock runway, wheeling the coal away; they had nearly unloaded
the schooner, having cleared away the coal directly under the hatch,
and were now loading their buckets at the two piles farther back,
between the hatches. These buckets stood as high as their waists, and
held, according to Brother Mike, five hundred pounds when full. But a
man, having filled it to the brim, would seize the bale and drag it
along the flooring to the hatch, unhook a descending bucket, hook on
the full one, sing out an inarticulate cry, and drag the empty back to
the coal to be filled in its turn--all with a never-lessening display
of extravagant muscular force.

"Heavens! what wark!" said John, as they peered down the hatch. "An'
how long do they kape this up?"

"Tin hours a day, and not a minute longer," answered Mike; "that is,
barrin' fifteen minutes at tin in the mornin' and three in the
afternoon, whin they knock off for a bite and a drink up at me place on
the corner. They go up and ate up me free lunch and soak in about a
pint of whisky at one drink."

"The divil! and don't it kill thim?"

"Naw. They come back and sweat it out. They couldn't wurruk like this
widout it."

"It's great work, Mike. Look at the devilopment. Did ye iver see a
prize-fighter with such muscles?"

"A prize-fighter!" said Mike. "Jawn Murphy, luk at them. They're all
sizes, big and little, in my two gangs; but give the littlest a month's
trainin' in the science o' boxin' and he'd lick any heavyweight in the
wurruld. Ye see, ye simply can't hurt 'em."

"Can't hurt 'em?"

"Ye can't hurt 'em. They're not human. They're wild beasts. They come
from the hills and bogs of Limerick and Galway, and they can't speak
the language, but call themsel