forcing them to fight the
woman herself. She was making trouble, they urged, with her low wages
and her unloading rates. "Perhaps his Riverence c'u'd straighten her
out." Father McCluskey's interview with Tom took place in the priest's
room one morning after early mass. It had gone abroad, somehow, that his
Reverence intended to discipline the "high-flyer," and a considerable
number of the "tenement-house gang," as Tom called them, had loitered
behind to watch the effect of the good father's remonstrances.

What Tom told the priest no one ever knew: such conferences are part of
the regime of the church, and go no farther. It was noticed, however, as
she came down the aisle, that her eyes were red, as if from weeping,
and that she never raised them from the floor as she passed between her
enemies on her way to the church door. Once outside, she put her arm
around Jennie, who was waiting, and the two strolled slowly across the
lots to her house.

When the priest came out, his own eyes were tinged with moisture. He
called Dennis Quigg, McGaw's right-hand man, and in a voice loud enough
to be heard by those nearest him expressed his indignation that any
dissension should have arisen among his people over a woman's work,
and said that he would hear no more of this unchristian and unmanly
interference with one whose only support came from the labor of her
hands.

McGaw and his friends were not discouraged. They were only determined
upon some more definite stroke. It was therefore ordered that a
committee be appointed to waylay her men going to work, and inform them
of their duty to their fellow-laborers.

Accordingly, this same Quigg--smooth-shaven, smirking, and hollow-eyed,
with a diamond pin, half a yard of watch-chain, and a fancy
shirt--ex-village clerk with his accounts short, ex-deputy sheriff
with his accounts of cruelty and blackmail long, and at present walking
delegate of the Union--was appointed a committee of one for that duty.

Quigg began by begging a ride in one of Tom's return carts, and taking
this opportunity to lay before the driver the enormity of working for
Grogan for thirty dollars a month and board, when there were a number of
his brethren out of work and starving who would not work for less than
two dollars a day if it were offered them. It was plainly the driver's
duty, Quigg urged, to give up his job until Tom Grogan could be
compelled to hire him back at advanced wages. During this enforced