"Yes," he went on, swinging his long arms, and opening and closing his big fists; "an' do ye know what's happenin' to-day? A car-load o' scabs has been switched into the mill-yard. I got the word when I come in. By six o'clock one of 'em will have your machine, Bill Souder, and one of 'em will have yours, Abe Slinsky, and one of 'em will have yours, and yours, and yours," pointing his forefinger in rapid succession at the men who sat in front of him. His voice rose to a piercing height:
"Will ye let 'em keep 'em?"
"No!" came the answer from two hundred throats. "No!" "We'll club 'em out! We'll kill 'em!"
Men were on their feet, shouting, gesticulating, demanding, swearing. Bricky's voice rose again, high above the clamor.
"I don't know what you're goin' to do about it, men; but I know what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' down, now, to see Dick Malleson. I ain't goin' to beg 'im for my job; I'm goin' to demand it, and if he don't give it to me, by God! I'll take it! And if ye'll go along ye'll have them millionaries on their knees in an hour's time, a-beggin' for mercy. Who goes?"
"We all go! We're fightin' strong, an' we're fightin' mad, an' we'll have our rights. Come on!"
There was a rush for the hall doors. The sound of the chairman's gavel was lost in the din. The pending resolution and its fate were forgotten. Men fought with each other in their eagerness to get to the street and to take up the line of march to the mills. Chairs were overturned. Doors were wrenched from their hinges. Prayer-books and hymnals and lesson-leaves were scattered on the floor and trampled under shuffling feet. Lamar, red-faced, shouting, gesticulating, tried to stem the torrent, but he might as well have tried to hold back Niagara. Some laughed at him, others cursed him, no one obeyed him.
The rector of Christ Church, standing in a niche by
