The next day, when the whistle blew at noon, William Sonnet ate his dinner from his tin pail as usual; but then, instead of going out into the street to play baseball with the poets from the adjacent factories, as the Empire Foundry employees generally did, he took a quiet stroll through the whole establishment, under the pretense of looking for an envoy that had been knocked off the end of a ballade. In the packing-department was a large consignment of goods from his floor ready for shipment, and he stopped to examine the burr of a Scotch magazine story to make sure that it had not been rubbed off by carelessness. What was his surprise to find that the dialect, which he himself had gone over with a cross-cut file that very morning, was now worn completely smooth by contact with an emery-wheel! He replaced the story carefully in the fine sawdust in which it was packed, and then examined the other goods. They had not yet been touched, but it was evident to him that the miscreants fully intended to finish the destructive work which they had only had time to begin. Returning to his own bench, he passed two or three poets who were talking earnestly together, and by straining his ears he heard one of them whisper: “We’ll finish the job to-night. Meet me at ten.” That was enough for William Sonnet. He determined, without delay, what course to pursue. At half-past nine that evening, three mysterious figures draped in black cloaks entered the Empire Prose and Verse Foundry by a side door. William Sonnet was one of the three, and the others were his employers, Messrs. Rime & Reeson. He led them to a place of concealment which commanded a full view of the packing-room. Before long stealthy footsteps were heard, and the four conspirators entered. “Listen,” said the eldest of the quartet, as he threw the light from his dark lantern on the sullen faces of his companions; “you all know why we are here. This night we will complete William Sonnet’s ruin, and Easter Monday will find him hunting for work in Paterson and Newark, and hunting in vain. Why is he foreman of the dialect department, while we toil at the bench for a mere crust? Mary Birdseye is now his bride; but when we wooed her we were rejected like our own poems.” “And that, too, although we inclosed no postage,” retorted the second poet, bitterly.