night
the mills escaped destruction only by the vigilance of the extra
watchmen. The same evening Aunt Maria was stopped on the village
street and told that it was best she should lose no time in moving away
with her little niece Dollie, since it was more than likely the
innocent would suffer with the guilty. For the first time, Harvey
understood the earnestness of the men; but he clung to his resolution
all the same.

You can see how easily the trouble could have been ended. The employes
had abated their first demand and were willing to compromise. Had
Harvey spoken his honest thoughts, he would have said the men were
right, or at any rate he ought to have agreed to their proposal to
submit the dispute to arbitration; but he was too proud to yield.

"They will take it for weakness on my part," was his thought; "it will
make an end of all system and open the way for demands that in the end
will destroy the business."

The sixty new hands reached Bardstown and were about as numerous as the
men who wrought in the mills before the strike. They looked like a
determined band, who would be able to take care of themselves in the
troubles that impended.

The arrivals were received with scowls by the old employes, who hooted
and jeered them as they marched grimly to the mills. No blows were
struck, though more than once an outbreak was imminent. It was too
late in the day to begin work, but the new hands were shown through the
establishment, with a view of familiarizing them to some extent with
their new duties. Most of them had had some experience in the same
kind of work, but there was enough ignorance to insure much vexation
and loss.

The night that followed was so quiet that Harvey believed the strikers
had been awed by his threat to appeal to the law and by the determined
front of the new men.

"It's a dear lesson," he said to himself, "but they need it, and it is
high time it was taught to them."

The next morning the whistle sent out its ear-splitting screech, whose
echoes swung back and forth, like so many pendulums between the hills,
but to the amazement of Harvey Bradley, not a person was seen coming
toward the mills. The whistle called them again, and Hugh O'Hara and
Tom Hansell strolled leisurely up the street to the office, where Mr.
Bradley wonderingly awaited them.

"You'll have to blow that whistle a little louder," said O'Hara, with a
tantalizing grin.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Those c