rebellious.  What follows?  We can’t lock up facts that affect the trade; we are bound to report the case at the next general meeting.  It excites comments, some of them perhaps a little intemperate; the lower kind of workmen get inflamed with passion, and often, I am sorry to say, write ruffianly letters, and now and then do ruffianly acts, which disgrace the town, and are strongly reprobated by us.  Why, Mr. Little, it has been my lot to send a civil remonstrance, written with my own hand, in pretty fair English—­for a man who plied bellows and hammer twenty years of my life—­and be treated with silent contempt; and two months after to be offering a reward of twenty or thirty pounds, for the discovery of some misguided man, that had taken on himself to right this very matter with a can of gunpowder, or some such coarse expedient.”

“Yes, but, sir, what hurts me is, you don’t consider me to be worth a civil note.  You only remonstrated with Cheetham.”

“You can’t wonder at that.  Our trade hasn’t been together many years:  and what drove us together?  The tyranny of our employers.  What has kept us together?  The bitter experience of hard work and little pay, whenever we were out of union.  Those who now direct the trades are old enough to remember when we were all ground down to the dust by the greedy masters; and therefore it is natural, when a grievance arises, we should be inclined to look to those old offenders for redress in the first instance.  Sometimes the masters convince us the fault lies with workmen; and then we trouble the master no more than we are forced to do in order to act upon the offenders.  But, to come to the point:  what is your proposal?”

“I beg to be admitted into the union.”

“What union?”

“Why, of course, the one I have offended, through ignorance.  The edge-tool forgers.”

Jobson shook his head, and said he feared there were one or two objections.

Henry saw it was no use bidding low.  “I’ll pay L15 down,” said he, “and I’ll engage not to draw relief from your fund, unless disabled by accident or violence.”

“I will submit your offer to the trade,” said Jobson.  He added, “Then there, I conclude, the matter rests for the present.”

Henry interpreted this to mean that he had nothing to apprehend, unless his proposal should be rejected.  He put the L15 down on the table, though Mr. Jobson told him that was premature, and went off as light as a feather.  Being nice and clean, and his afternoon’s work spoiled, he could not resist the temptation; he went to “Woodbine Villa.”  He found Miss Carden at home, and she looked quietly pleased at his unexpected arrival:  but Jael’s color came and went, and her tranquil bosom rose and fell slowly, but grandly, for a minute, as she lowered her head over her work.

This was a heavenly change to Henry Little.  Away from the deafening workshop, and the mean jealousies and brutality of his inferiors, who despised him, to the presence of a beautiful and refined girl, who was his superior, yet did not despise him.  From sin to purity, from din to cleanliness, from war to peace, from vilest passions to Paradise.