to the cause of honest labor and against capital--for life or death. We
want you. We want men of sand and men of sense, and you've got both.
You must join."

Sam Sleeny was by this time pretty well filled with beer and wrath. He
felt himself in a certain sense bound by the weighty secret which
Offitt had imparted to him and flattered by his invitation. A few
touches more of adroit flattery, and the agitator's victory was
complete. Sleeny felt sore and tired to the very heart. He had behaved
like a brute to the girl he loved; he had been put clearly in the wrong
in his quarrel with her, and yet he was certain that all was not well
with either of them. The tormenting syllogism ran continually through
his head: "She is the prettiest woman in the world--rich fellows like
pretty women,--therefore--death and curses on him!" Or sometimes the
form of it would change to this: "He is rich and handsome--girls like
men who are rich and handsome,--therefore------," the same rage and
imprecations, and the same sense of powerless fury. He knew and cared
nothing about Offitt's Labor Reform. He could earn a good living by his
trade no matter who went to Congress, and he hated these "chinny
bummers," as he called them, who talked about "State help and
self-help" over their beer. But to-night he was tormented and badgered
to such a point that he was ready for anything which his tempter might
suggest. The words of Offitt, alternately wheedling and excoriating,
had turned his foolish head. His hatred of Farnham was easily extended
to the class to which he belonged, and even to the money which made him
formidable.

He walked away from the garden with Offitt, and turned down a filthy
alley to a squalid tenement house,--called by its proprietor Perry
Place, and by the neighbors Rook's Ranch,--to the lodge-room of the