“1.—­To sell skilled labor below the statement price is a just offense, and injury to trade.  But to obtain above the statement price is to benefit trade.  The high price, that stands alone to-day, will not stand alone forever.  It gets quoted in bargains, and draws prices up to it.  That has been proved a thousand times.

“2.—­It is not under any master’s skin to pay a man more than he is worth.  It I get a high price, it is because I make a first-rate article.  If a man has got superior knowledge, he is not going to give it away to gratify envious ignorance.”

To this, in due course, he received from Jobson the following: 

“Dear sir,—­I advised you according to my judgment and experience:  but, doubtless, you are the best judge of your own affairs.”

And that closed the correspondence with the Secretaries.

The gentle Jobson and the polite Parkin had retired from the correspondence with their air of mild regret and placid resignation just three days, when young Little found a dirty crumpled letter on his anvil, written in pencil.  It ran thus: 

“Turn up or youl wish you had droped it.  Youl be made so as youl never do hands turn agin, an never know what hurt you.

“Moonraker.” (Signed)

Henry swore.

When he had sworn (and, as a Briton, I think he had denied himself that satisfaction long enough), he caught up a strip of steel with his pincers, shoved it into the coals, heated it, and, in half a minute, forged two long steel nails.  He then nailed this letter to his wall, and wrote under it in chalk, “I offer L10 reward to any one who will show me the coward who wrote this, but was afraid to sign it.  The writing is peculiar, and can easily be identified.”

He also took the knife that had been so ostentatiously fixed in his door, and carried it about him night and day, with a firm resolve to use it in self-defense, if necessary.

And now the plot thickened:  the decent workmen in Cheetham’s works were passive; they said nothing offensive, but had no longer the inclination, even if they had the power, to interfere and restrain the lower workmen from venting their envy and malice.  Scarcely a day passed without growls and scowls.  But Little went his way haughtily, and affected not to see, nor hear them.

However, one day, at dinner-time, he happened, unluckily, to be detained by Bayne in the yard, when the men came out:  and two or three of the roughs took this opportunity and began on him at once, in the Dash Dialect, of course; they knew no other.

A great burly forger, whose red matted hair was powdered with coal-dust, and his face bloated with habitual intemperance, planted himself insolently before Henry, and said, in a very loud voice, “How many more trade meetings are we to have for one ——­ knobstick?”

Henry replied, in a moment, “Is it my fault if your shilly-shallying committees can’t say yes or no to L15?  You’d say yes to it, wouldn’t you, sooner than go to bed sober?”