VI.


TWO MEN SHAKE HANDS.


Sleeny, though a Bread-winner in full standing, was not yet
sufficiently impressed with the wrongs of labor to throw down his
hammer and saw. He continued his work upon Farnham's conservatory,
under the direction of Fergus Ferguson, the gardener, with the same
instinctive fidelity which had always characterized him. He had his
intervals of right feeling and common sense, when he reflected that
Farnham had done him no wrong, and probably intended no wrong to Maud,
and that he was not answerable for the ill luck that met him in his
wooing, for Maud had refused him before she ever saw Farnham. But, once
in a while, and especially when he was in company with Offitt, an
access of jealous fury would come upon him, which found vent in
imprecations which were none the less fervid for being slowly and
haltingly uttered. The dark-skinned, unwholesome-looking Bread-winner
found a singular delight in tormenting the powerful young fellow. He
felt a spontaneous hatred for him, for many reasons. His shapely build,
his curly blond hair and beard, his frank blue eye, first attracted his
envious notice; his steady, contented industry excited in him a desire
to pervert a workman whose daily life was a practical argument against
the doctrines of socialism, by which Offitt made a part of his
precarious living; and after he had met Maud Matchin and had felt, as
such natures will, the force of her beauty, his instinctive hate became
an active, though secret, hostility. She had come one evening with