"Let me tell that! I know you wouldn't do yourself justice, Mr.Dryfoos, and I want 'em to know how a strike can be managed, if you take it in time.

You see, some of those fellows got a notion that there ought to be a union among the working-men to keep up wages, and dictate to the employers, and Mr.Dryfoos's foreman was the ringleader in the business.

They understood pretty well that as soon as he found it out that foreman would walk the plank, and so they watched out till they thought they had Mr.Dryfoos just where they wanted him--everything on the keen jump, and every man worth his weight in diamonds--and then they came to him, and--told him to sign a promise to keep that foreman to the end of the season, or till he was through with the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under penalty of having them all knock off.

Mr.Dryfoos smelled a mouse, but he couldn't tell where the mouse was; he saw that they did have him, and he signed, of course.

There wasn't anything really against the fellow, anyway; he was a first-rate man, and he did his duty every time; only he'd got some of those ideas into his head, and they turned it.