him. Some already realized the extent of their
blunder; others, sullen and disheartened, knew not how. All seemed to
start and turn as though at sound of a familiar voice, when a man
stepped from the open office door and began to speak, calmly at first,
then with growing resonance and effect, as though he were again upon the
rostrum preaching to the oppressed.

"No one would willingly harm you, Mr. Wallace: no one would knowingly
have injured Mr. Ainslie. Our people, even when wronged and
down-trodden, respect gray hairs, but the time has come when even
patience has its limit. We are not the wreckers yonder, though we well
might be. All that is the work of a great sympathetic people, long
protesting against the tyranny to which we have bowed in the past. We
would have spared the road and its officials as we have spared you, but
let me say to you now the blow that downed your son was a blessing in
disguise, for had he joined those coming minions of the
government--those fancy soldiers of the aristocratic wards--I would not
be answerable for what might happen, not only to him, but to you and
yours."

Wallace let the speaker finish before he strode a long step nearer.

[Illustration: "YOU MADE THOSE THREATS LAST NIGHT," HE THUNDERED.]

"You made those threats last night," he thundered, shaking his bony
forefinger under the other's rubicund nose. "I know your voice, and I
want to know your name. Who are you, I say, who have come here sowing
seeds of riot among honest men? You dare not give your name, and these
men will not. My own son said he could not tell me. No man afraid or
ashamed of his name was ever in honest work. I answer you that if he
hasn't gone already, just so soon as he can stir my boy shall take his
place, musket in hand, and you and yours may do your cowardly worst."

"You've had fair warning, Mr. Wallace," said the stranger, backing
uneasily away from the menacing hand of the old mechanic. "You've done
enough already to merit mobbing, as you call it, and it was our mercy
and our forbearance that spared you in the cab this day. But as for
those who live in this suburb and have gone to join the gang of
organized murder, and, under the guise of militia-men, to shoot down
their suffering brothers, may Heaven help them if they once again show
their faces here!"

And even as the speaker finished, over in the yards, beyond the long
line of brown freight cars, went up a yell of wrath, a savage sort of
chee