James had little cause to dally here; but noticed, in the hour or two he had to wait, an unusual, unquiet expression on the faces of the people, who were swarming from the tenement doors into the street, like ants from some huge ant-hill. By mid-day he found a freight train that would take him to his destination. His journey lay up a river valley, its sloping mountains clothed in reds and yellows of autumn woodland. For many miles everything was silent with a Sunday stillness; then the crests of the hills were lost, and the blue sky shaded into yellowish brown, at the touch of a few tall iron towers. These were pouring forth black cinders, as they had for seven years past; for the iron smelter may never say, “it is good,” and rest, upon the seventh day. James watched the carload of ore climbing up along the outside of the furnace, until the great tower’s top was opened, as the tons of ore fell in; then the prisoned flame burst forth and the lower surface of the sulphurous brown cloud that filled the valley was dyed a vivid crimson with the pouring flame. This river basin had been lovely once; but now its soil was coal-dust, and the soft swelling of the hillsides, all up and down the stream, was spotted with huge red tanks, of rusting brick-red iron, large as ancient forts, the storage fountains of the pipe-lines. And the whole country bristled with the abandoned scaffoldings of old oil-wells, like a scanty fur. James talked with the brakeman and found that his accustomed engineer was disabled. Bill, he said, was a non-union man, and had been given many a hint; but he stuck it out and wouldn’t join, and so the Union had deputed Ned O’Neal, the engineer of the local freight that ran just ahead, to choose the steepest down grade and “drop upon” Bill’s time. O’Neal had “dropped” accordingly, lagging behind under pretext that his engine would not fire, and finally getting his long train of fifty coal-cars just at the bottom of a curving trestle. Bill had gone into him and scattered the last dozen coal-cars, doing some injury to his locomotive; but his head was badly cut open, and his brakeman had broken his neck. Starbuck was too well used to the tyranny of laboring-men to pay much attention to this murder; and he asked about the riots. Yes, said the brakeman, he believed they had had quite a time at Steam City for several days past. A few men had been hurt, some of them Hungarians at the mines or suchlike. But they had smashed up a terrible deal of rolling-stock. It was night when Starbuck reached Steam City. The streets were jammed with people, but the town was very still. Only, just in front of the station, was a piece of vacant land that might have contained two or three acres; this was closely strewn with the wreck of cars, machinery, and engines; nothing but the trucks, wheels, and other iron work remaining, all twisted in a wild confusion of iron arms and limbs.