“It’s all up.  You know what I told you last night about the attack that was preparing on Riverley.  I went out there myself, this forenoon.  I knew some of the strikers, and I thought I would see if the —­ —­ —­ —­ would let me send my horse Blue Ruin through to Rochester to-morrow.  He is entered for the races there, you know, and I didn’t want, by —­ —­ —­ —­, to miss my engagements, understand?  Well, as I drove out there, after I got about half way, it began to occur to me that I never saw so many women since the Lord made me.  The road was full of them in carts, buggies, horseback, and afoot.  I thought a committee of ’em was going; but I suppose they couldn’t trust a committee, and so they all went.  There were so many of ’em I couldn’t drive fast, and so I got there about the same time the head of the column began to arrive.  You never saw anything like it in your life.  The strikers had been living out there in a good deal of style—­with sentries and republican government and all that.  By the great hokey-pokey! they couldn’t keep it up a minute when their wives came.  They knew ’em too well.  They just bulged in without rhyme or rule.  Every woman went for her husband and told him to pack up and go home.  Some of ’em—­the artful kind—­begged and wheedled and cried; said they were so tired—­wanted their sweethearts again.  But the bigger part talked hard sense,—­told ’em their lazy picnic had lasted long enough, that there was no meat in the house, and that they had got to come home and go to work.  The siege didn’t last half an hour.  The men brazened it out awhile; some were rough; told their wives to dry up, and one big fellow slapped his wife for crying.  By jingo! it wasn’t half a flash before another fellow slapped him, and there they had it, rolling over and over on the grass, till the others pulled them apart by the legs.  It was a gone case from the start.  They held a meeting off-hand; the women stayed by to watch proceedings, and, not to make a long story about it, when I started back a delegation of the strikers came with me to see the president of the roads, and trains will run through to-night as usual.  I am devilish glad of it, for my part.  There is nothing in Rochester of any force but Rosin-the-Bow, and my horse can show him the way around the track as if he was getting a dollar an hour as a guide.”

“That is good news certainly.  Is it generally known in the city?”

“I think not.  It was too late for the afternoon papers.  I told Jimmy Nelson, and he tore down to the depot to save what is left of his fruit.  He swore so about it that I was quite shocked.”

“What about the mill hands?” asked Farnham.

“The whole thing will now collapse at once.  We shall receive the proposition of the men who left us to-morrow, and re-engage on our own terms, next day, as many as we want.  We shan’t be hard on them.  But one or two gifted orators will have to take the road.  They are fit for nothing but Congress, and they can’t all go from this district.  If I were you, Arthur, by the way, I wouldn’t muster out that army of yours till to-morrow.  But I don’t think there will be any more calls in your neighborhood.  You are too inhospitable to visitors.”