When he laughed he gave the impression of the fixedness of merriment of a mask.

He looked keenly at Nahum Beals with that immovable laugh on his face, and spoke with perfectly good-natured sarcasm.

"All very well for the string-pieces of the bridge from oppression to freedom," he said, "but you need some common-sense for the ties, or you'll slump." "What do you mean ?" "We ain't in the Old Testament, but the nineteenth century, and those old prophets, if they were alive to-day, would have to step down out of their flaming chariots and hang their mantles on the bushes, and instead of standing on mountain-tops and tellin' their enemies what rats they were, and how they would get what they deserved later on, they would have to tell their enemies what they wanted them to do to better matters, and make them do it." "Instead of standing by your own strike in Greenboro, you quit and come here to work in McGuire's the minute you got a chance," said Nahum Beals, sullenly, and Sargent responded, with his unrelaxing laugh, "I left enough strikers for the situation in Greenboro; don't you worry about me." "I think he done quite right to quit the strike if he got a chance to work," Joseph Atkins interposed.

"Folks have got to look out for themselves, labor reform or no labor reform." "That's the corner-stone of labor reform, seems to me," said Andrew.
"Seems to me sometimes you talk like a damned scab," cried Nahum Beals, fiercely, red spots flickering in his thin cheeks.

Andrew looked at him, and spoke with slow wrath.