"He was a Norwegian, a big, fine-looking man. He was _all right_. He
couldn't talk much English, but he knew that his folks were hungry. 'You
gif me a yob,' he kept saying, until I explained I wasn't in the business,
had nothing to do with the Pullman works. Then he sat down and looked at
the floor. 'I vas fooled.' Well, it seems he did inlaying work, fine
cabinet work, and got good pay. He built a house for himself out in some
place, and he was fired among the first last winter,--I guess because he
didn't live in Pullman."

"That's the story they use," Brome Porter said sceptically. "You should
call the watchman; they're apt to be dangerous."

"A crowd of 'em," put in Carson, "were at the Pullman office this morning;
wanted to _arbitrate_."

He spoke deprecatingly of their innocence, but Porter's tones were harsh.

"To arbitrate! to arbitrate! when we are making money by having 'em quit."

Miss Hitchcock turned apprehensively to her companion. Her handsome, clear
face was perplexed; she was distressed over the way the talk was going.

"It's as bad as polo!" she exclaimed, in low tones. But the doctor did not
hear her.

"Is it so," he was asking Colonel Hitchcock, "that the men who had been
thrifty enough to get homes outside of Pullman had to go first because they
didn't pay rent to the company? I heard the same story from a patient in
the hospital."