“Oh, I think you won’t do that, Jimmy.”

“You think I won’t!” said Nelson, absolutely incandescent with the story of his wrongs.  “I’ll swear by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that I will thrash the hide off him next spring—­if I don’t forget it.”

Farnham went home, mounted his horse, and rode about the city to see what progress the strike was making.  There was little disorder visible on the surface of things.  The “sections” had evidently not ordered a general cessation of labor; and yet there were curious signs of demoralization, as if the spirit of work was partially disintegrating and giving way to something not precisely lawless, but rather listless.  For instance, a crowd of workmen were engaged industriously and, to all appearance, contentedly upon a large school-building in construction.  A group of men, not half their number, approached them and ordered them to leave off work.  The builders looked at each other and then at their exhorters in a confused fashion for a moment, and ended by obeying the summons in a sullen and indifferent manner.  They took off their aprons, went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances of the master-builder.  A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like a burlesque of the last performance.  Several men were at work in a hole in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the surface.  A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black’s box slung over his shoulder, came up and shouted, “You ——­ ——­ rats, come out of that, or we’ll knock the scalps off’n you.”  The men, without even looking to see the source of the summons, threw down their tools and got out of the hole.  The boy had run away; they looked about for a moment, as if bewildered, and then one of them, a gray-headed Irishman, said, “Well, we’d better be a lavin’ off, if the rest is,” and they all went away.

In this fashion it came about that by nightfall all the squares and public places were thronged with an idle and expectant crowd, not actively mischievous or threatening, but affording a vast mass of inflammable material in case the fire should start in any quarter.  They gathered everywhere in dense groups, exchanging rumors and surmises, in which fact and fiction were fantastically mingled.

“The rolling-mills all close to-morrow,” said a sallow and hollow-eyed tailor.  “That’ll let loose twenty thousand men on the town,—­big, brawny fellows.  I’m glad my wife is in Clairfield.”

“All you know about it!  Clairfield is twice as bad off as here.  The machine shops has all struck there, and the men went through the armory this afternoon.  They’re camped all along Delaware street, every man with a pair of revolvers and a musket.”

“You don’t say so!” said the schneider, turning a shade more sallow.  “I’d better telegraph my wife to come home.”

“I wouldn’t hurry,” was the impassive response.  “You don’t know where we’ll be to-morrow.  They have been drilling all day at Riverley, three thousand of ’em.  They’ll come in to-morrow, mebbe, and hang all the railroad presidents.  That may make trouble.”