Let me see your hand." When I held out my hand he looked at it closely for a moment, and then took it with a quick warm pressure in one of his, and gave it a little shake, in a way not quite American.
"You are one of us," said he, "you work." I thought at first that it was a bit of pleasantry, and I was about to return it in kind when I saw plainly in his face a look of solemn intent.
"So," he said, "we shall travel like comrades." He thrust his scarred hand through my arm, and we walked up the road side by side, his bulging pockets beating first against his legs and then against mine, quite impartially.
"I think," said the stranger, "that we shall be arrested at Kilburn." "We shall!" I exclaimed with something, I admit, of a shock.
"Yes," he said, "but it is all in the day's work." "How is that ?" He stopped in the road and faced me.

Throwing back his overcoat he pointed to a small red button on his coat lapel.
"They don't want me in Kilburn," said he, "the mill men are strikin' there, and the bosses have got armed men on every corner.

Oh, the capitalists are watchin' for me, all right." I cannot convey the strange excitement I felt.

It seemed as though these words suddenly opened a whole new world around me--a world I had heard about for years, but never entered.

And the tone in which he had used the word "capitalist!" I had almost to glance around to make sure that there were no ravening capitalists hiding behind the trees.
"So you are a Socialist," I said.
"Yes," he answered.