feel like starting. If you can thrash me then you
shall be allowed to depart in peace after you've done it."

Tom did not put up his hands, though he watched keenly to see whether the
stranger meant to attack him. The stranger muttered unintelligible
threats, then he turned to the laborers pressing about him.

"Men," he demanded, "are you going to be free, or are you going to allow
yourselves to be treated like a lot of slaves by this boy?"

"If that's all you've got to say," Tom warned "you may as well start now."

"Start?" scoffed the sallow-faced one. "Where to?"

"Anywhere, outside of this camp," Tom informed him. "You can't stay here
any longer, and you can't come here again. If I catch you, again, on this
company's property, I'll see to it that you're arrested, and locked up for
trespass."

"That's the way to talk!" nodded Treasurer Prenter, approvingly.

"I guess I'll go when I get good and ready," asserted the stranger.

In the front ranks of the crowd pressing around them, Reade now discerned
the face of the Italian gang-master with whom he had talked recently.

"What's your name?" Tom demanded, turning about on the gang-master.

"Scipio, sir."

"Then, Scipio, take four men, and escort this fellow out of the camp.
Don't use any force unless you have to, but see to it that this fellow
leaves camp as quickly as he can walk---or be dragged. Start him now."

Gang-master Scipio plainly didn't like the job, but he liked it better than
he did the idea of being discharged. So he spoke to four Italians about
him, and the five surrounded the man.

"Hol' on dar, Boss Reade!" spoke up a negro. "Ef yo' carry dis matter too
far, den dere's gwine to be a strike on dis wohk. Jess ez dis gemman sez,
we ain't no slaves. Yo' try to stop all our pleasures ebenings, an' dar's
gwine be a strike---shuah!"

"You may strike right now, if you wish to," Tom retorted, facing the last
speaker. "Mr. Renshaw will be prepared to pay you off within hour. Any
other man in this camp who isn't content to get along without liquor and
gambling may as well strike at the same time. Mr. Renshaw, it's half-past
eight. At nine o'clock please be at the house ready to pay off any man who
isn't satisfied to live and work in a camp where neither drinking nor
gambling is allowed. Scipio, why haven't you started that fellow away from
here?"

"Too bigga crowd in front of us," replied the Italian gang-master,
shrugging his should