Both boys were athletic and powerful; Jim, through long years in the open air and active, energetic life, Fred, through systematic training in the gymnasium and the camp and armory of the National Guard, for Fred had been three years a soldier in a "crack" city regiment, and the corporal's chevrons on his uniform were his greatest pride. Even in boy days he had begun his training in the cadet corps of the public school, where military drill, especially the "setting-up" system of the regular army, had been wisely added to the daily course of instruction; and while Jim's burly form was a trifle bowed and heavy, Fred's slender frame was erect, sinewy, and, in every motion, quick and elastic. "Jim could hug the breath out of you, Fred, like a thundering big bear if he once got his arms around you, and Fred could dance all around and hammer you into pulp, Jim, while you were trying to grip him," was the way the father expressed it, and old Wallace knew young men in general and his own boys in particular as well as might be expected of the clear-eyed, shrewd-headed veteran that he was. He himself had served the Great Western railway faithfully from the days when it was only the struggling Lake Shore, and now as a first-class mechanic in the repair shops he was a foreman whom officials and operators alike respected. He had lived a sober, honest, industrious life, had reared his family on the principle of mind your own business and pay as you go, and was looking forward to retiring within a year or two, and giving his aching old bones the rest they deserved, and enjoying the fruits of his life of toil, when the long-predicted irruption began with the strike ordered by the Switchmen's Union.