* * * * * In the years that immediately preceded the troublous times of 1886, I was a very busy man and often out of the city, too much engrossed with the growing business on my hands to consider very seriously the disturbances of that period. The fight with labor, which seems to be a necessary feature of our progress, had come a kind of crisis in that year. But the events in Chicago during that crisis are still so near to many of us that even with the rapid forgetfulness of our days they have not quite escaped the memory of thoughtful men. I remember that now and then, around Ma Pierson's table, the talk turned on the strike over at the harvesting works. We were all on the same side, I guess--the side of capital; there was enough for all of the good things of life, we thought, if men would only stop their kicking and keep at work. Slocum, for all that he was a lawyer, was the only easy one on the strikers: so long as they respected the laws he was with them in their struggle to get all they could from their employers. "Mr. Renshaw says they're too well off now," Lou observed. "Who is Mr. Renshaw?" I asked, surprised that Lou should take an interest in such matters. Slocum looked across the table at me, and Grace quickly began on something else.... Well, on the night of the fourth of May I was on my way to the Piersons' from the Union Station. It was very late, for I had just returned from Aurora, where I had been during the afternoon on my own business. As I got on the street car the men on the platform were talking excitedly about the shooting over at the harvester works. When I reached home, I was surprised to find no one on the steps, the door wide open, and a kind of emptiness in the whole place. "What's up?" I asked old Pierson. "That Cox girl's got her cheek blowed open with a bomb or suthin'. Times like this folks can't go gallivantin' about the streets," the old man snarled. Slocum came in at the sound of my voice and told me what had happened. His face was white, and his long arms still twitched with the horror of what he had seen that night. It seems that Dick Pierson had come home to supper full of the news about the row between the police and the strikers. His talk had worked up the girls,--that is, Hillary Cox and Grace,--for Lou hadn't come home,--until all of them had started off after supper in the direction of the harvester works, where the trouble was reported to be. [Illustration: _His long arms twitched with horror._]