nce."

"Our only salvation is to stick to our right to train as many
workmen as we choose. The question of wages is of no account compared
with that; the rate of wages will adjust itself."

"If we could manage it somehow with the marble workers," suggested
Mr. Slocum, "that would demoralize the other trades, and they'd be
obliged to fall in."

"I don't see that they lack demoralization."

"If something isn't done, they'll end up by knocking in our front
doors or burning us all up."

"Let them."

"It's very well to say let them," exclaimed Mr. Slocum,
petulantly, "when you haven't any front door to be knocked in!"

"But I have you and Margaret to consider, if there were actual
danger. When anything like violence threatens, there's an honest
shoulder for every one of the hundred and fifty muskets in the
armory."

"Those muskets might get on the wrong shoulders."

"That isn't likely. You do not seem to know, sir, that there is a
strong guard at the armory day and night."

"I was not aware of that."

"It is a fact all the same," said Richard; and Mr. Slocum went
away easier in his mind, and remained so--two or three hours.

On the eighth, ninth, and tenth days the clouds lay very black
along the horizon. The marble workers, who began to see their
mistake, were reproaching the foundry men with enticing them into to
coalition, and the spinners were hot in their denunciations of the
molders. Ancient personal antagonisms that had been slumbering
started to their feet. Torrini fell out of favor, and in the midst of
one of his finest perorations uncomplimentary missiles, selected from
the animal kingdom, had been thrown at him. The grand torchlight
procession on the night of the ninth culminated in a disturbance, in
which many men got injured, several badly, and the windows of
Brackett's bakery were stove in. A point of light had pierced the
darkness,--the trades were quarreling among themselves!

The selectmen had sworn in special constables among the citizens,
and some of the more retired streets were now patrolled after dark,
for there had been threats of incendiarism.

Bishop's stables burst into flames one midnight,--whether fired
intentionally or accidentally was not known; but the giant bellows at
Dana's Mills was slit and two belts were cut at the Miantowona Iron
Works that same night.

At this juncture a report that out-of-town hands were coming to
replace the strikers acted on the public mind like p