As I entered the city I remembered the workman’s house at which I had traded the silver pitcher, and in that direction my hunger drove me.  Twilight was falling when I came to the place.  I passed around by the alleyway and crawled up the black steps, on which I collapsed.  I managed to reach out with the crutch and knock on the door.  Then I must have fainted, for I came to in the kitchen, my face wet with water, and whisky being poured down my throat.  I choked and spluttered and tried to talk.  I began saying something about not having any more silver pitchers, but that I would make it up to them afterward if they would only give me something to eat.  But the housewife interrupted me.

“Why, you poor man,” she said, “haven’t you heard?  The strike was called off this afternoon.  Of course we’ll give you something to eat.”

She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparing to fry it.

“Let me have some now, please,” I begged; and I ate the raw bacon on a slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demands of the I.L.W. had been granted.  The wires had been opened up in the early afternoon, and everywhere the employers’ associations had given in.  There hadn’t been any employers left in San Francisco, but General Folsom had spoken for them.  The trains and steamers would start running in the morning, and so would everything else just as soon as system could be established.

And that was the end of the general strike.  I never want to see another one.  It was worse than a war.  A general strike is a cruel and immoral thing, and the brain of man should be capable of running industry in a more rational way.  Harrison is still my chauffeur.  It was part of the conditions of the I.L.W. that all of its members should be reinstated in their old positions.  Brown never came back, but the rest of the servants are with me.  I hadn’t the heart to discharge them—­poor creatures, they were pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver.  And now I can’t discharge them.  They have all been unionized by the I.L.W.  The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human endurance.  Something must be done.

THE SEA-FARMER

“That wull be the doctor’s launch,” said Captain MacElrath.

The pilot grunted, while the skipper swept on with his glass from the launch to the strip of beach and to Kingston beyond, and then slowly across the entrance to Howth Head on the northern side.

“The tide’s right, and we’ll have you docked in two hours,” the pilot vouchsafed, with an effort at cheeriness.  “Ring’s End Basin, is it?”

This time the skipper grunted.

“A dirty Dublin day.”

Again the skipper grunted.  He was weary with the night of wind in the Irish Channel behind him, the unbroken hours of which he had spent on the bridge.  And he was weary with all the voyage behind him—­two years and four months between home port and home port, eight hundred and fifty days by his log.