It was only occasionally that he saw the Benningtons.  His nights were devoted to speech-making or conferences.  Sometimes, however, on his way home late at night, he would walk up as far as the old house and look up at the windows; and if he saw a light in Patty’s room he would pause for a few minutes, then turn about, Jove limping at his heels.  Patty Bennington!  The one idyl in his noisy life, the one uplifting influence!  He knew that he was not making this fight for clean politics because his heart was in it, but because Patty’s was.  It is thus that women make the world better, indirectly.  Once or twice he had seen Patty in the gallery at mass meetings; but, hurry as he might, he never could get around to the entrance in time to speak to her.

As for McQuade, he knew that between him and that gentleman the war had only begun.  He was constantly wondering how McQuade would act; but so far as he could see, McQuade had absolutely nothing to stand on.  McQuade would have to tunnel; he could not carry on the war above ground.  McQuade would never forgive the result of the dog fight.  There had been so much raillery in the newspapers that McQuade became furious whenever it was mentioned.  His dog was a professional fighter and had made three kills, and here a “pet” had given him his first licking.  It rankled, and none of McQuade’s friends dared refer to it.  So Warrington remained alert and watchful; it was all he could do.

In more ways than one Herculaneum became widely known.  Other cities realized that there was a peculiar strike in progress, upon the outcome of which depended the principles of unionism.  Here was an employer who was making preparations to destroy his shops, regardless of financial loss, regardless of public opinion, regardless of everything but his right to employ and discharge whom he willed.  Every great employer in the country focused his eye upon Herculaneum; every union leader did likewise.  The outcome would mean a kind of revolution.

At the shops the men had placed the usual sentinels around the limits, ready to repel the expected army of non-union workmen.  But a day passed, two, three, four; a week, then ten days; a month.  Not a single strange man approached the gates.  Not one man among them had any information whatever as to the movements of their whilom employer.  Scab labor never showed its head above the horizon.  The men began to wonder; they began to grow restless.  But Morrissy always pacified them with the word “wait.”

“Vigilance, boys; that’s the word,” said the leader.  “The moment we go to sleep he’ll have his men inside.”

So the men relaxed none of their watching, night and day.  It was rather pathetic to see the children bringing scanty meals to the guarding men.  They were being misled, that was all, but they had to find that out themselves.  The city’s bill-boards were covered with “Boycott” and “Unfair” paper.  The men were careful.  They made no effort to injure anything; they made no attempt to enter the shops; they had had a brush with the militia once, and they were wise.  They could beat the new men and maim them, but so long as they did not touch property there would be no call for the militia.  They waited.  Mean-time Morrissy wore a new diamond.