“Let your men break ranks, and breakfast, Major Rivington,” said Peter.  In two minutes dandy and mick were mingled, exchanging experiences, as they sliced meat off the same ham-bones and emptied the same cracker boxes.  What was more, each was respecting and liking the other.  One touch of danger is almost as efficacious as one touch of nature.  It is not the differences in men which make ill-feeling or want of sympathy, it is differences in conditions.

In the mean time, Peter, Ray and Ogden had come together over their grub, much as if it was a legal rather than an illegal trouble to be dealt with.

“Where were you?” asked Peter.

“At the Sixty-third Street terminals,” said Ray.  “We didn’t have any fun at all.  As quiet as a cow.  You always were lucky!  Excuse me, Peter, I oughtn’t to have said it,” Ray continued, seeing Peter’s face.  “It’s this wretched American trick of joking at everything.”

Ogden, to change the subject, asked:  “Did you really say ’damn’?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought you disapproved of cuss words.”

“I do.  But the crowd wouldn’t believe that I was honest in my intention to protect the substitutes.  They thought I was too much of a politician to dare to do it.  So I swore, thinking they would understand that as they would not anything else.  I hoped it might save actual firing.  But they became so enraged that they didn’t care if we did shoot.”

Just then one of the crowd shrieked, “Down with the blood-suckers.  On to freedom.  Freedom of life, of property, of food, of water, of air, of land.  Destroy the money power!”

“If we ever get to the freedom he wants,” said Ray, “we’ll utilize that chap for supplying free gas.”

“Splendid raw material for free soap,” said Ogden.

“He’s not the only one,” said Ray.  “I haven’t had a wash in nine hours, and salt meats are beginning to pall.”

“There are plenty of fellows out there will eat it for you, Ray,” said Peter, “and plenty more who have not washed in weeks.”

“It’s their own fault.”

“Yes.  But if you burn or cut yourself, through ignorance, that doesn’t make the pain any the less.”

“They don’t look like a crowd which could give us trouble.”

“They are just the kind who can.  They are men lifted off their common sense, and therefore capable of thinking they can do anything, just as John Brown expected to conquer Virginia with forty men.”

“But there’s no danger of their getting the upper hand.”

“No.  Yet I wish we had orders to clear the Park now, while there are comparatively few here, or else to go back to our armories, and let them have their meeting in peace.  Our being here will only excite them.”

“Hear that,” said Ray, as the crowd gave a great roar as another regiment came up Park Place, across the Park and spread out so as to cover Broadway.