'You ask what I have not to give, Dunn,' was the reply of Austin. 'Our yard is full; and consider the season! Perhaps when spring comes on----' 'How am I to exist till spring, sir?' he burst forth in a voice that was but just kept from tears. 'And the wife and the children?' 'I wish I could help you, Dunn. Your case is but that of many others.' 'There have been so many strangers took on, sir!' 'Of course there have been. To do the work that you and others refused.' 'I have not a place to lay my head in this night, sir. I have not so much as a slice of bread. I'd do the meanest work that could be offered to me.' Austin felt in his pocket for a piece of money, and gave it him. 'What misery they have brought upon themselves!' he thought. When the announcement reached Mrs. Henry Hunter of Florence's engagement, she did not approve of it. Not that she had any objection to Austin Clay; he had from the first been a favourite with her, though she had sometimes marked her preference by a somewhat patronizing manner; but for Florence to marry her father's clerk, though that clerk had now become partner, was more than she could at the first moment quietly yield to. 'It is quite a descent for her,' she said to her husband privately. 'What can James be thinking of? The very idea of her marrying Austin Clay!' 'But if she likes him?' 'That ought not to go for anything. Suppose it had been Mary? I would not have let her have him.' 'I would,' decisively returned Mr. Henry Hunter. 'Clay's worth his weight in gold.' Some short while given to preliminaries, and to the re-establishment (in a degree) of Mr. Hunter's shattered health, and the new firm 'Hunter and Clay' was duly announced to the business world. Upon an appointed day, Mr. Hunter stood before his workmen, his arm within Austin's. He was introducing him to them in his new capacity of partner. The strike was quite at an end, and the men--so many as could be made room for--had returned; but Mr. Hunter would not consent to discharge the hands that had come forward to take work during the emergency. 'What has the strike brought you?' inquired Mr. Hunter, seizing upon the occasion to offer a word of advice. 'Any good?' Strictly speaking, the men could not reply that it had. In the silence that ensued after the question, one man's voice was at length raised. 'We look back upon it as a subject of congratulation, sir.' 'Congratulation!' exclaimed Mr. Hunter. 'Upon what point?' 'That we have had the pluck to hold out so long in the teeth of difficulties,' replied the voice. 'Pluck is a good quality when rightly applied,' observed Mr. Hunter. 'But what good has the "pluck," or the strike, brought to you in this case?--for that was the question we were upon.' 'It was a lock-out, sir; not a strike.'