morning dram. Look here." Bayne was
shocked, but not surprised. "It is the regular routine," said he. "They
begin civil; but if you don't obey, they turn it over to the scum."

"Do you think my life is really in danger?"

"No, not yet; I never knew a man molested on one warning. This is just
to frighten you. If you were to take no notice, you'd likely get another
warning, or two, at most; and then they'd do you, as sure as a gun."

"Do me?"

"Oh, that is the Hillsborough word. It means to disable a man from work.
Sometimes they lie in wait in these dark streets, and fracture his skull
with life-preservers; or break his arm, or cut the sinew of his wrist;
and that they call DOING him. Or, if it is a grinder, they'll put powder
in his trough, and then the sparks of his own making fire it, and scorch
him, and perhaps blind him for life; that's DOING him. They have gone as
far as shooting men with shot, and even with a bullet, but never so as
to kill the man dead on the spot. They DO him. They are skilled workmen,
you know; well, they are skilled workmen at violence and all, and it is
astonishing how they contrive to stop within an inch of murder. They'll
chance it though sometimes with their favorite gunpowder. If you're very
wrong with the trade, and they can't DO you any other way, they'll blow
your house up from the cellar, or let a can of powder down the chimney,
with a lighted fuse, or fling a petard in at the window, and they take
the chance of killing a houseful of innocent people, to get at the one
that's on the black books of the trade, and has to be DONE."

"The beasts! I'll buy a six-shooter. I'll meet craft with craft, and
force with force."

"What can you do against ten thousand? No; go you at once to the
Secretary of the Edge-Tool Grinders, and get your trade into his Union.
You will have to pay; but don't mind that. Cheetham will go halves."

"I'll go at dinner-time."

"And why not now?"

"Because," said Henry, with a candor all his own, "I'm getting over my
fright a bit, and my blood is beginning to boil at being threatened by a
sneak, who wouldn't stand before me one moment in that yard, knife or no
knife."

Bayne smiled a friendly but faint smile, and shook his head with grave
disapprobation, and said, with wonder, "Fancy postponing Peace!"

Henry went to his forge and worked till dinner-time. Nay, more, was a
beautiful whistler, and always whistled a little at his work: so to-day
he whistle