“Not so. We have sold our plant to the Barton Machine Brickmaking Company; and you maltreated them so at starting that now they won't let a single Union man set his foot on their premises.” The company in question made bricks better and cheaper than any other brickmaster; but, making them by machinery, were ALWAYS at war with the Brickmakers' Union, and, whenever a good chance occurred for destroying their property, it was done. They, on their part, diminished those chances greatly by setting up their works five miles from the town, and by keeping armed watchmen and police. Only these ran away with their profits. Now, when this company came so near the town, and proceeded to work up Whitbread's clay, in execution of the contract with which their purchase saddled them, the Brickmakers' Union held a great meeting, in which full a hundred brickmakers took part, and passed extraordinary resolutions, and voted extraordinary sums of money, and recorded both in their books. These books were subsequently destroyed, for a reason the reader can easily divine who has read this narrative with his understanding. Soon after that meeting, one Kay, a brickmaker, who was never seen to make a brick--for the best of all reasons, he lived by blood alone--was observed reconnoitering the premises, and that very night a quantity of barrows, utensils, and tools were heaped together, naphtha poured over them, and the whole set on fire. Another dark night, twenty thousand bricks were trampled so noiselessly that the perpetrators were neither seen nor heard. But Bolt hired more men, put up a notice he would shoot any intruder dead, and so frightened them by his blustering that they kept away, being cowards at bottom, and the bricks were rapidly made, and burnt, and some were even delivered; these bricks were carted from the yard to the building site by one Harris, who had nothing to do with the quarrel; he was a carter by profession, and wheeled bricks for all the world. One night this poor man's haystack and stable were all in flames in a moment, and unearthly screams issued from the latter. The man ran out, half-naked, and his first thought was to save his good gray mare from the fire. But this act of humanity had been foreseen and provided against. The miscreants had crept into the stable, and tied the poor docile beast fast by the head to the rack; then fired the straw. Her screams were such as no man knew a horse could utter. They pierced all hearts, however hard, till her burnt body burst the burnt cords, and all fell together. Man could not aid her. But God can avenge her. As if the poor thing could tell whether she was drawing machine-made bricks, or hand-made bricks! The incident is painful to relate; but it would be unjust to omit it. It was characteristic of that particular Union; and, indeed, without it my reader could not possibly appreciate the brickmaking mind.