you're a foreigner yourself, Mike."

"Am I, then? Bedad, I'm not! I'm a rale American Know Nothing."

"Well, Mike," said Stevens maliciously, "when it comes to a
reg'lar division of lands and greenbacks in the United States, I go
in for the Chinese having their share."

"The Chinese!" shouted Michael. "Oh, murther, Misther Stevens! Ye
wouldn't be fur dividin' with thim blatherskites!"

"Yes, with them,--as well as the rest," returned Stevens, dryly.

Meanwhile the directors and stockholders of the various mills took
counsel in a room at the rear of the National Bank. Mr. Slocum,
following Richard's advice, declined to attend the meeting in person,
or to allow his name to figure on the list of vice-presidents.

"Why should we hitch our good cause to their doubtful one?"
reflected Richard. "We have no concessions or proposals to make. When
our men are ready to come back to us, they will receive just wages
and fair treatment. They know that. We do not want to fight the
molders. Let the iron-mills do their own fighting;" and Richard
stolidly employed himself in taking an account of stock, and
forwarding by express to their destination the ten or twelve carved
mantel-pieces that happily completed the last contract.

Then his responsibilities shrunk to winding up the office clock
and keeping Mr. Slocum firmly on his legs. The latter was by far the
more onerous duty, for Mr. Slocum ran down two or three times in the
course of every twenty-four hours, while the clock once wound was
fixed for the day.

"If I could only have a good set of Waltham works put into your
father," said Richard to Margaret, after one of Mr. Slocum's
relapses, "he would go better."

"Poor papa! he is not a fighter, like you."

"Your father is what I call a belligerent non-combatant."

Richard was seeing a great deal of Margaret these days. Mr. Slocum
had invited him to sleep in the studio until the excitement was past.
Margaret was afraid to have him take that long walk between the yard
and his lodgings in Lime Street, and then her father was an old man
to be without any protection in the house in such untoward times.

So Richard slept in the studio, and had his plate at table, like
one of the family. This arrangement was favorable to many a stolen
five minutes with Margaret, in the hall or on the staircase. In these
fortuitous moments he breathed an atmosphere that sustained him in
his task of dispelling Mr. Slocum's recurrent fits of desp