mstrung and hampered in every way by the
power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well
have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from
legal crucifixion. Worse still, they themselves, and the beaten strikers
with whom they had been fraternizing, got a black eye in the affair; and
many an editorial column, many a pulpit, unctuously discoursed thereon.
Many an anti-Socialist thug and grafter, loud-mouthed and blatant,
bellowed revamped platitudes of "immorality" and "breaking up the home,"
and the "nation of fatherless children," pointing at Gabriel Armstrong
as a shining example of Socialist hypocrisy and filth.

Press, law, church, capitalism itself nailed this man and the movement
he stood for, to the cross. And the pimps and parasites of the private
detective agency chuckled in their well-paid glee. The woman, Gabriel's
betrayer, counted her "thirty pieces of silver" and laughed in the foul
dark. The police cut a fine melon secretly handed them by Flint; and so,
too, did the local papers and more than one local pulpit.

So, in Gabriel's grief and woe and desolation, as he sat in his grim
cell with aching head, bruised face and bleeding heart, with all his
plans now broken, with the very soul within him dead--in this grief and
anguish, I say, the foul harpy-brood of Capitalism revelled and rioted
like maggots in carrion.

None more viciously than old Flint, himself. None with more brutal joy,
more savage satisfaction. One of the culminant moments of his life, he
felt, was on the evening after the dastardly plot had been carried to
its putrid conclusion.

Opening the Rochester "News-Intelligencer" which Slade had sent him, his
glittering eyes seemed to sparkle joy as a blue-penciled column met his
gaze.

Eagerly he read it all, every word, and weighed it, and re-read it, as
men do when news is dear to their souls. Already, through the New York
papers he had got the essentials of the affair. Already, by long
distance 'phone he had received the outlines of the news from Slade, as
well as a code telegram of more than 500 words, giving him additional
details. But this paper especially pleased him. The other Rochester
sheets, which Slade would send as fast as they appeared, he already was
looking forward to, with keenest pleasure.

"Ah! _This_ is what I call efficiency!" he exclaimed, settling himself
in his big chair, adjusting the pince-nez on his hawk-bill and preparing