Stanley could not repress a smile.  Kearney himself had been naturalized only a year before.

For an hour he unfolded principles, threatened men of wealth, pounded Stanley’s knee until it was sore and finally stalked off, highly pleased with himself.

“He’s amusing enough,” said Francisco to his father that evening.  “But we mustn’t underrate him as you said.  The fellow has force.  He knows the way to stir up human passion and he’ll use his knowledge to the full.  Also he knows equity and law.  Some of his ideas are altruistic.”

“What is he going to do to the Central Pacific nabobs if they don’t discharge their Chinese laborers?” asked Adrian.

Young Stanley laughed.  “He threatens to dynamite their castles on the hill.”

His father did not answer immediately.  “It may not be as funny as you think,” he commented.

* * * * *

With the weeks Po Lun mended rapidly.  Hang Far was at his bedside many hours each day.  Alice often found them chatting animatedly.

“When I get plenty well, we mally,” Po informed her.  “Maybeso go back to China.  What you say, Missee Alice?”

“I think you’d better stay with me,” she countered.  “As for Hang Far, we’ll find room for her.”  She smiled dolefully.  “I’m getting to be an old lady, Po Lun ...  I need more help in the house.”

“You nebbeh get old, Missee Alice,” said the sick man.  “Twenty yea’ I know you—­always like li’l gi’l.”

“Nonsense, Po!” cried Alice.  Nevertheless she was pleased.  “Will you and Hang Far stay with me?”

“I t’ink so, Missee,” Po replied.  “By ‘n’ by we take one li’l tlip fo’ honeymoon.  But plitty soon come back.”

* * * * *

The labor movement grew and Dennis with it—­both in self-importance and in popularity.  He went about the State making speeches, threatening the “shoddy aristocrats who want an emperor and a standing army to shoot down the people.”

Every Sunday he harangued a crowd of his adherents on a sand-lot near the city hall and owing to this fact his followers were dubbed “The Sand-Lot Party.”  One day Robert, after hearing them discourse, returned home shaken and angry.

“The man’s a maniac,” he told his father; “he talked of nothing but lynching railroad magnates and destroying their property.  He wants to blow up the Pacific Mail docks and burn the steamers ... to drop dynamite from balloons on Chinatown.”

Young Stanley joined them, smiling, and dropped into a chair.  “Whew!” he exclaimed, “it’s been a busy day down at the office.  Have you heard that Dennis Kearney’s been arrested?”

CHAPTER LXVIII

THE WOMAN REPORTER

Francisco stayed for tea and chatted of events.  Yes, Dennis Kearney was in jail and making a great hullabaloo about it.  He and five of his lieutenants had been arrested after an enthusiastic meeting on the Barbary Coast.