There had been a growing feeling of discontent in all the mills, and it had finally taken shape in the Ocean Mill, which was largely owned and controlled by Mr. Winter.  The discontent arose from a new scale of wages submitted by the company.  It was not satisfactory to the men, and the afternoon of that evening on which Philip had gone down to the hall a committee of the mill men had waited on Mr. Winter, and after a long conference had gone away without getting any satisfaction.  They could not agree on the proposition made by the company and by their own labor organization.  Later in the day one of the committee, under instructions, went to see Mr. Winter alone, and came away from the interview very much excited and angry.  He spent the first part of the evening in a saloon, where he related a part of his interview with the mill-owner, and said that he had finally kicked him out of the office.  Still later in the evening he told several of the men that he was going to see Mr. Winter again, knowing that on certain evenings he was in the habit of staying down at the mill office until nearly half-past nine for special business.  The mills were undergoing repairs, and Mr. Winter was away from home more than usual.

That was the last that any one saw of the man until, about ten o’clock, some one going home past the mill office heard a man groaning at the foot of a new excavation at the end of the building, and climbing down discovered the man who had been to see Mr. Winter twice that afternoon.  He had a terrible gash in his head, and lived only a few minutes after he was discovered.  To the half-dozen men who stood over him in the saloon, where he had been carried, he had murmured the name of “Mr. Winter,” and had then expired.

A very little adds fuel to the brain of men already heated with rum and hatred.  The rumor spread like lightning that the wealthy mill-owner had killed one of the employees who had gone to see him peaceably and arrange matters for the men.  He had thrown him out of the office into one of the new mill excavations and left him there to die like a dog in a ditch.  So the story ran all through the tenement district, and in an incredibly swift time the worst elements in Milton were surging toward Mr. Winter’s house with murder in their hearts, and the means of accomplishing it in their hands.

Mr. Winter had finished his work at the office and gone home to sit down to a late lunch, as his custom was, when he was interrupted by the mob.  The rest of the incident is connected with what has been told.  The crowd seized him with little ceremony, and it was only Philip’s timely arrival and his saving of minutes until the police arrived, that prevented a lynching in Milton that night.  As it was, Mr. Winter received a scare from which it took a long time to recover.  He dreaded to go out alone at night.  He kept on guard a special watchman, and lived in more or less terror even then.  It was satisfactorily proved in a few days that the