than a month he was dead. It was better for his poor hard-working
wife and family.

One other death grew out of the summer riots, though this was at a
distance. Dennis Connelly had been working with a railroad-gang, and the
strikers there had a desperate struggle with the civil authority. They
were worsted in the end, and Connelly was one of the victims, or perhaps
more truly speaking, a victim to bad whiskey, for when sober he was very
peaceable. Kit sent for his body, and had him decently buried.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE strikers at the hat-factory did not carry the day. The employers
were very indignant, and tabooed the union men altogether. At
Garafield's the men were called in council, the points discussed, and a
small advance in wages allowed. The co-operatives went their way
quietly. Perhaps the most convincing argument was a very jubilant letter
from Winston, part of which Darcy put up in the hall. He had just
succeeded in making an important contract for two years, on very fair
terms. That would see them through safely unless the whole world came to
grief again!

Jack wrote Miss McLeod a graphic account of the "labor troubles," and
she replied with equally characteristic _verve_. "She could hardly
decide," she declared, "whether to be glad, or sorry, that her young
friend had grown so independent of her; but in any emergency she wished
to be remembered."

There was now a certain respect paid to Hope Mills, among the community
at Yerbury. Perhaps there are no people so exacting and difficult to
satisfy as those friends and neighbors whose advice you have not taken,
and prospered without it. They indulge in a righteous self-complacency
if you are unfortunate, and pity you grandly; but to own themselves
mistaken is the one bitter flavor in the cup. There seemed to be but one
point now upon which they were doubtful,--the honesty of the managers at
the last moment. Every workman knew or might know exactly how affairs
stood, but _they_ did not have the capital. Just at the end of the five
years _somebody_ might abscond with the money-bag under his arm. It
seemed so every way certain that human nature could not withstand the
temptation.

Yet there was growing up among the hands a curious neighborly sympathy,
as if they were in some degree relatives; and they were made so, in
fact, by some marriages of sons and daughters. They were more
intelligent; they kept their houses cleaner, their little gardens
prett