mad, and I talked wild. I
said that Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn't
wait, but'd have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered
about--blind-fair blind boozy. I tripped over some fool's foot
purposely, just beside a bench against the wall, and I come down on that
bench hard. They laughed--Lord, how they laughed! They didn't mind my
givin' 'em fits--all except one or two. That was what I expected. The
one or two was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there I was asleep
on the bench-stony blind, and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one
threw my coat over me. I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not much--I
knew better than that--and I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I
thought would happen. They talked. And here it is. They're going to have
a strike in the mills, and you're to get a toss into the river. That's
to be on Friday. But the other thing--well, they all cleared away but
two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed
behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all
right.

"Well, they give the thing away. One of 'em had just come from Felix
Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of
the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand
was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it."

"Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply.

"Dynamite."

"Where would they get it?"

"Some left from blasting below the mills."

"All right! Go on."

"There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they
quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten
years."

Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that
lent to his face an almost droll look.

"What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge
was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over
to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help.
I've heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to
equal that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and
to hurt me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He's the dregs, is
Marchand."

"I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett. "He
was boilin' hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he
was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away
before--well, he got her away East; a