'Ay, it has--if it is to die out in this ignoble way,' said Sam. 'Better have been slaving like dray-horses all along, than break down in the effort to escape the slavery, and hug it to your arms again. If you had only half the spirit of men, you'd stop White's work for awhile, and Darby's too, as you did Baxendale's. Have you been thinking over what was said last night?' he continued, in a lower tone. The men nodded. One of them ventured to express an opinion that it was a 'dangerous game.' 'That depends upon how it's done,' said Shuck. 'Who has been the worse, pray, for the pitching into Baxendale? Can he, or anybody else, point a finger and say, "It was you did it?" or "It was you?" Why, of course he can't.' 'One might not come off again with the like luck.' 'Psha!' returned Sam, evincing a great amount of ridicule. 'But one mightn't, Shuck,' persisted his adversary. 'Oh, let the traitors alone, to go their own way in triumph if you like; get up a piece of plate for them, with their names wrote on it in gold,' satirically answered Sam. 'Yah! it sickens one to see you true fellows going over to the oppressionists.' 'How do you make out that White, and them, be oppressionists?' 'White, and them? they are worse than oppressionists a thousand times over,' fiercely cried Sam. 'I can't find words bad enough for _them_. It isn't of them I spoke: I spoke of the masters.' 'Well, Shuck, there's oppression on all sides, I think,' rejoined one of the men. 'I'd be glad to rise in the world if I could, and I'd work over hours to help me on to it and to educate my children a bit better than common; but if you come down upon me and say, "You shall not do it, you shall only work the stated hours laid down, and nobody shall work more," I call that oppression.' 'So it is,' assented another voice. 'The masters never oppressed us like that.' 'What's fair for one is fair for all,' said Sam. 'We must work and share alike.' 'That would be right enough if we all had talents and industry equal,' was the reply. 'But as we haven't, and never shall have, it can't be fair to put a limit on us.' 'There's one question I'd like to have answered, Shuck,' interposed a former speaker: 'but I'm afeared it never will be answered, with satisfaction to us. What is to become of those men that the masters can't find employment for? If every one of us was free to go back to work to-morrow, and sought to do so, where would we get it? Our old shops be half filled with strangers, and there'd be thousands of us rejected--no room for us. Would the Society keep us?' A somewhat difficult question to answer, even for Slippery Sam. Perhaps for that reason he suddenly called out 'Hush!' and bent his head and put up his finger in the attitude of listening. 'There's something unusual going on in the street,' cried he. 'Let's see what it is.'