“John!”

“I am sick and tired, dear.  I have raised the wages all over the district; my men work less than any other hands in town.  I have built a gymnasium for them, given them books, pool-tables, and games, to say nothing of the swimming-tank.  I have arranged the annual outings.  I have established a pension-list.  But all this seems to have done no good.  I am at the end of the rope.  Oh, the poor devils who work are all right; it’s the men outside who are raising all this trouble; it’s the union, not the men.  There’s no denying the power these men can wield, for wrong or right.  Ignorance can not resist the temptation to use it at all times and for all purposes.  But I am master at the Bennington shops; injustice shall not dictate to me.  They’ll use it politically, too.  After all, I’m glad I’ve told you.”

“But, John, I’m afraid for you.  They may hurt you.”

John answered with a sound that was more of a growl than a laugh.

“Don’t you worry about me, honey; I’m no weakling.  I wish Dick could be with me when the fight comes, but he will have his hands full, and the strike will not help him any.  Don’t you worry.  Father always felt that there would be trouble some day.  He held a large bundle of bank-stock and railroad bonds, and the income from these alone will take care of us very comfortably.  There’s a good deal of real estate, too, that may be reckoned on.  If the crash does come, we’ll pack up, take the mother, and go abroad for a year or so.  But before I’m done I’ll teach local unionism a lesson it will not forget soon.  Don’t you worry,” he repeated again; “you just leave it to me.”

She did not speak, but kissed his hand.  She knew that no pleading could move him; and besides, he was in the right.

“I don’t understand the lukewarmness of the party papers,” he said.  “They ought to hurrah over Dick.  But perhaps the secret machinery is being set to work, and they’ve been told that there will be trouble at the convention.  The senator never backs down, and I’ve never seen anybody that could frighten Dick.  There’ll be some interesting events this fall.  Herculaneum will figure in the newspapers from Maine to California, for everybody is familiar with Warrington’s name and work.  It’s a month yet before the delegates get together; either Warrington will run or he won’t.  Calling him a meddler is good.  If the Times isn’t a meddler, I never saw one and have misunderstood the meaning of the word.”

In the music-room Patty was playing Grieg and MacDowell, and Warrington was turning the pages.  The chords, weird and melancholy, seemed to permeate his whole being; sad, haunting music, that spoke of toil, tears, death and division, failure and defeat, hapless love and loveless happiness.  After a polonaise, Patty stopped.

“If music were only lasting, like a painting, a statue, a book,” she said; “but it isn’t.  Why these things haunt me every day, but I can recollect nothing; I have to come back to the piano.  It is elusive.”