Dan crossed the room to the door and flung it open. For an instant he wavered on the threshold, but a moment later he was striding down the street, with his hat jammed needlessly low over his ears, and his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. At the window, Constance, with a white, scared face, was watching him from between the parted curtains. She hoped he would look back, but he never once turned his head. CHAPTER XVI ON Thursday the _Herald_ published its report of the trouble at the shops. Oakley had looked forward to the paper's appearance with considerable eagerness. He hoped to glean from it some idea of the tactics the men would adopt, and in this he was not disappointed. Ryder served up his sensation, which was still a sensation, in spite of the fact that it was common property and two days old before it was accorded the dignity of type and ink, in his most impressive style: “The situation at the car-shops has assumed a serious phase, and a strike is imminent. Matters came to a focus day before yesterday, and may now be said to have reached an acute stage. It is expected that the carpenters--of whom quite a number are employed on repair work--will be the first to go out unless certain demands which they are to make to-day are promptly acceded to by General Cornish's local representative. “Both sides maintain the strictest secrecy, but from reliable sources the Herald gathers that the men will insist upon Mr. Branyon being taken back by the company. “Another grievance of the men, and one in which they should have the sympathy of the entire community, is their objection to working with the manager's father, who came here recently from the East and has since been employed in the shops. It has been learned that he is an ex-convict who was sentenced for a long term of imprisonment in June, 1875, for the murder of Thomas Sharp, at Burton, Massachusetts. “He was only recently set at liberty, and the men are natural-ly incensed and indignant at having to work with him. Still another grievance is the new schedule of wages. “A committee representing every department in the shops and possessing the fullest authority, met last night at the Odd Fellows' Hall on South Main Street, but their deliberations were secret. A well-authenticated rumor has it, however, that the most complete harmony prevailed, and that the employés are pledged to drastic measures unless they get fair treatment from the company.” Ryder tacked a moral to this, and the moral was that labor required a champion to protect it from the soulless greed and grinding tyranny of the great corporations which had sprung into existence under the fostering wing of corrupt legislation. Of course “the Picturesque Statesman from Old Hanover” was the Hercules who was prepared to right these wrongs of honest industry, and to curb the power of Cornish, whose vampire lusts fattened on the sweat of the toiler, and especially the toiler at Antioch.