oliday buoyancy of the
earlier part of the week had evaporated. A turn-out on the part of
one of the trades, though it was accompanied by music and a banner
with a lively inscription, failed to arouse general enthusiasm. A
serious and even a sullen face was not rare among the crowds that
wandered aimlessly up and down the village.

On the seventh day it required no penetration to see the change.
There was decidedly less good-natured chaffing and more drunkenness,
though Snelling had invoked popular contumely and decimated his
bar-room by refusing to trust for drinks. Bracket had let his ovens
cool, and his shutters were up. The treasury of the trades-union was
nearly drained, and there were growlings that too much had been
fooled away on banners and a brass band for the iron men's parade the
previous forenoon. It was when Brackett's eye sighted the banner with
"Bread or Blood" on it, that he had put up his shutters.

Torrini was now making violent harangues at Grimsey's Hall to
largely augmented listeners, whom his words irritated without
convincing. Shut off from the tavern, the men flocked to hear him and
the other speakers, for born orators were just then as thick as
unripe whortleberries. There was nowhere else to go. At home were
reproaches that maddened, and darkness, for the kerosene had given
out.

Though all the trades had been swept into the movement, it is not
to be understood that every workman was losing his head. There were
men who owned their cottages and had small sums laid by in the
savings-bank; who had always sent their children to the district
school, and listened themselves to at least one of Mr. Langly's
sermons or one of Father O'Meara's discourses every Sunday. These
were anchored to good order; they neither frequented the bar-room nor
attended the conclaves at Grimsey's Hall, but deplored as deeply as
any one the spirit that was manifesting itself. They would have
returned to work now--if they had dared. To this class belonged
Stevens.

"Why don't you come up to the hall, nights?" asked Durgin,
accosting him on the street, one afternoon. "You'd run a chance of
hearing me hold forth some of these evenings."

"You've answered your own question, William. I shouldn't like to
see you making an idiot of yourself."

"This is a square fight between labor and capital," returned
Durgin with dignity, "and every man ought to take a hand in it."

"William," said Stevens meditatively, "do you know a