doomed to walk under a cloud.

* * * * *

The long struggle was beginning to tell on the strikers. It was
evidenced in the shiny suits worn by the men who met daily at the hall
in town to discuss the strike. It was seen again in the worn wraps of
many a mother and in the torn shoes of school-children. These were only
the outer signs, the real suffering was carefully covered up--hidden in
the homes where home comfort had become a reminiscence. The battle at
first had been with the strong but now the brunt of it was being shifted
to the shoulders of the women, the wives and mothers of the strikers.
These patient martyrs, whose business it had been to look after the
home, now suffered the humiliation of having door after door closed to
them and their children. Of a morning you might see them tramping
through the snow from shop to shop trying to secure credit for the day.
The strike would be over in a little while, they argued, but the
struggling shop-keeper had his own to look after. The wholesale houses
were refusing him credit and so he was powerless to help the hungry
wives of worthy workmen. The men themselves were beginning to lose
heart. Many a man who had not known what it was to be without a dollar
now saw those dearest to him in actual want and went away to look for
work on other roads. Finally, a monster union meeting was called for the
purpose of getting an expression of opinion as to the advisability of
making the best possible terms with the company and calling the strike
off. Here the engine-men, trainmen and switchmen met, but the radical
element was in the majority, and the suggestions of the heads of the
various Brotherhoods that the strike be called off were howled down by
the unterrified. It was at this meeting that a tall, powerful, but mild
mannered man, stood up in the face of all the opposing elements and
advised that the strike be ended at once. He did not suggest this from a
selfish motive, he said. He was a single man and had money enough to
keep himself in idleness for a year, but there were hundreds of families
who were in want, and it was for these he was pleading. The speaker was
interrupted repeatedly, but he kept his place and continued to talk
until the mob became silent and listened out of mere curiosity. "You can
never hold an army of hungry men together," said the speaker; "you can't
fight gold with a famine. The company, we are told, has already lost a
mi