It is true that First Sergeant Barriscale took into serious consideration the question of an attempt to block the confirmation of his rival’s election to the first lieutenancy.

But when he consulted with his father about the matter, the elder Barriscale advised against such action. Not that he had any love for McCormack. He was against him as bitterly as was his son. But he had a longer head than had his boy, and he felt that the time was not yet ripe in which to inaugurate a movement that would do the young officer the most injury. Hal had not renounced his socialistic leanings, nor had he forsaken his radical associates. Of that fact the Barriscales had assured themselves, and with that fact, and what it promised for the future, they were at present content.

“Give him rope enough, and he’ll hang himself,” was the sententious comment of the elder Barriscale.

So, in due time, Lieutenant McCormack received his commission and took the oath required of commissioned officers. It was an oath the obligation of which stared him in the face many times in the days that were to come.

So, at last, Hal had his shoulder-straps, his officer’s uniform, and his equipment. Much against his inclination he had been obliged to accept these things as a gift from his Aunt Sarah Halpert. Not to have done so would, as she herself declared, have completely broken her heart.

“I can’t go and fight,” she said to him; “not but what I’d be perfectly willing to, but they wouldn’t let me. So the next best thing for me to do was to furnish you with your fighting togs. And you’ll have a chance to use ’em; take my word for it. Uncle Sam’s soldiers are going to have some fighting to do before things get settled.”

“I hope not, Aunt Sarah.”

“You hope not! Why, you weak-kneed pacifist! If this government doesn’t jump in and help France and England smash the Kaiser, I’ll be ashamed of my flag.”

“It’s not our quarrel.”

“Of course it’s our quarrel. Those stupid German blunderers have made it our quarrel. They’ve trodden on Uncle Sam’s coat-tails once a week for a year. They’ll do it about twice more and then something will drop. Besides, there’s all that hubbub down in Mexico, making life a nightmare this side the border. Those hoodlums have got to be clubbed into decency, and I don’t see but what you fellows have got to go down there and do it. There isn’t enough of the regular army to patrol a greaser’s cabin. And if you don’t get a taste of war across the seas or down among the cactus, you may have a chance to show your mettle right here at home. They say the workmen in the mills are getting impudent and ugly and threatening a strike that’ll make Ben Barriscale’s hair stand on end. I mean the old man.”

She paused, not because she had no more to say, but in order to take fresh breath. The pause gave Hal another chance to break in.

“I wouldn’t mind helping to defend this country against a foreign foe, if it were necessary,” he said, “or even assisting to suppress a domestic rebellion against the lawfully organized government. But when it comes to doing strike duty I protest. That’s a job for the state police anyway; not for the National Guard.”

“But it is a job for the National Guard when it gets too big for the police or the state police to handle. I suppose men have a right to quit work whenever they want to; but they haven’t a right to try to win a strike with brickbats and torches.”

“If workmen were fairly treated, and given their due proportion of the product of their labor, there would be no strikes, and no brickbats, and no torches. Anyway, the idea of workers being awed or shot or bayoneted by the militia into submission to their capitalist employers’ terms, is so abhorrent to me that I don’t want to think of it.”

“There you go again, you wild-eyed anarchist! A fine militiaman you are! Threatening to compound felonies and protect criminals! You’d better——”

“There, now, Aunt Sarah, let’s call quits! We’ll never agree in the world. You come up to the armory to-morrow night and see me in my new uniform, and forget that I’m a bomb-throwing, king-killing anarchist.”

It was true, as Aunt Sarah had said, that there was uneasiness among the workmen employed in the Barriscale plant. The factory had never before been so busy. The company was not engaged directly in the manufacture of munitions for use by the entente allies, but it was engaged in the manufacture of implements and machinery for the making of such munitions. Among the men the rumor was current that the profits of the concern were enormous, and that the Barriscales and their associates were reaping great harvests of gold. They knew of no reason why they, in view of the sharp advance in the general cost of living, should not share in this prosperity. Wages had indeed been advanced twice since the advent of the European War, but these advances were merely a pittance in comparison to what they were entitled to receive if stories of the company’s profits were true.

However, the winter came and brought no strike. Men are not apt, in severe weather, to look complacently on disappearing jobs.

But when the late March days gave promise of an early spring, and new life began to stir the pulses of men as it stirred the heart of nature, the spirit of discontent awoke and crystallized into a demand on the officers of the Barriscale Company for much higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions of labor. The demand was refused. Next in order was an ultimatum to the effect that unless, by the following Tuesday night, the requirements of the men were substantially complied with, not a union man would be found at his post on Wednesday morning.

Benjamin Barriscale, Sr., shut his square jaws together, and told his board of directors that so far as he was concerned he would scrap the entire plant and go out of business before he would be black-jacked into submission to a lot of irresponsible union officials. And since he dominated the board and no one cared to dispute his judgment, the ultimatum was ignored and the strike was declared.

Both sides claimed to be confident of victory, and, as the contest lengthened, there was less talk of compromise, and the farther away appeared to be the day of settlement.

In the fifth week of the struggle a new element entered into the situation. Hitherto the management of the strike had been in the hands of labor union officials. They had held their men well in check, there had been little disorder and no rioting. But, from the inception of the trouble, organizers and leaders of the radical wing of the workers had labored among the idle men, quietly, insidiously, persistently, successfully. Now, having gained a firm foothold, they assumed management of the strike, and dictated to the company their own terms for reËmployment regardless of the demands made by union officials. Not only at the Barriscale works, but throughout the city, they made proselytes, and trouble. The discontented, the unthinking, the reckless, the foreign-born and unnaturalized, gathered under their leadership. Their logic was convincing, their philosophy alluring, their promises glittering; indeed, if they were to be believed, the day of labor’s redemption in Fairweather was at hand. The workers had only to persist in their demands and to block all resumption of work by any one until those demands were met, and victory was sure to rest on their banners.

Into this new, more aggressive, more bitter campaign, Hugo Donatello plunged with all of his accustomed vigor and enthusiasm. He believed in his cause. He did not see the ugly side of his propaganda. He was not at heart a criminal, he was a dreamer. And he dreamed that if the principle of the solidarity of labor, the international brotherhood of all who toiled, the distribution of all wealth to those who earned it by their toil, could once be established in this inland city of America, the benefit and glory of it would spread from this as a center, across the continent, across the ocean to bring peace to war-torn Europe; and the name of Hugo Donatello as chief propagandist of the new-old philosophy would be acclaimed throughout the civilized world.

He had not yet made a complete convert of Halpert McCormack. For while the young lieutenant sympathized deeply with his humanitarian motives, and, in a general way, with his philosophy of economics, he was not yet ready to approve of the methods by which the economic millennium was to be ushered in. Complete disarmament, confiscation of private property, abolition of restraining laws, sabotage and violence, these things were not to Hal’s liking; in his view the end did not quite justify the means. But, under the eloquence of Donatello’s logic, under the power of his persuasion, under the magic force of his enthusiasm, this young dreamer and reformer was drifting ever and ever nearer to the rocks and shoals of that radicalism upon which, if finally and completely stranded, he was sure to be wrecked.

It goes without saying that Donatello’s weekly Journal, The Disinherited, took up the cause of the more radical element among the striking workmen with vigor and enthusiasm. The attitude of the Barriscale corporation, and other manufacturers whose workmen were out, was characterized as selfish, obstinate and cruel. One issue of the paper, published some weeks after the inauguration of the strike, contained an editorial a portion of which ran as follows:

On the evening of the day on which the paper containing this article made its appearance, General Chick entered the drill-hall at the armory to find a group of militiamen reading, and discussing with some heat, the editorial in The Disinherited.

As the boy approached the crowd, one of the fun-loving members of it called out to him:

“Here’s a drive at you, Chick. Donatello says that no honest man will try to join Company E. Where’s that paper? Let Chick read it for himself.”

The paper was thrust into Chick’s hands and the article pointed out to him. He took it to the nearest electric sidelight, and slowly, and not without some difficulty, read it through.

When he returned to the group the young fellow who had spoken to him said:

“Well, what do you think of it?”

“I think,” replied the boy, “that he’s way off. I got no use for them dogs in the manger, anyway.”

The humorous soldier turned to his companions. “There’s no doubt,” he said, “but that Donatello had General Chick in mind when he wrote that article. He doesn’t want Chick to join Company E, and he’s trying to bluff him out in advance by assailing his honor and aspersing his motives. Chick, old boy, I wouldn’t stand for it if I were you.”

Chick never quite knew, when the boys talked to him, whether he was being addressed in jest or in earnest; and he didn’t know on this occasion. But he had usually found it safe to assume that those who gave him information or advice were treating him seriously and he proceeded now on that assumption.

“It don’t make no difference to me what he says,” replied Chick. “He can’t scare me out. When I git a chance to jine, I’ll jine.”

“That’s right! and I’d tell him so. I’d put it up to him squarely that his threats and warnings fall off of you like water off of a duck’s back.”

“Oh, maybe I’ll see him some time an’ have it out with him.”

“Good! But I wouldn’t wait. ‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’ I say. I’d tackle him to-morrow about it if I were you.”

But Chick was already shuffling away toward the stack-room and did not reply. The thing stayed on his mind, however, and the more he thought of it the more indignant he became. He was not satisfied that Donatello had had him in mind while writing the editorial. Probably that idea originated in the minds of the boys; it was not material anyway.

The serious part of it was that, through his newspaper, Donatello had been making an effort to prevent young men generally from joining the National Guard; and that, in Chick’s estimation, was an offense which fell little short of actual treason. He wondered if Donatello did not know that it was the duty of every young man who was able to do so, to become a soldier of the State; that it was a patriotic privilege; that some of the very finest young men in town were members of Company E. If he didn’t know it, some one ought to tell him. And perhaps no one was better fitted for the task of telling him than was General Chick, himself. Perhaps from no one else in the city could the information so appropriately come.

Many times that night Chick thought about it, and when morning came he had finally decided to call upon the editor of The Disinherited and enlighten his mind upon this important subject. It was toward noon, however, before, having finished the performance of the various tasks which usually occupied his mornings, he found time to make the visit he had determined upon. When he mounted the rickety stairs and entered the one large room which was used alike for press-room, mailing-room and office, he found Donatello there alone, sitting at a case and setting type. The man recognized him at once and called him by his name. It was not the first time they had met each other. Chick looked around him with some curiosity. He had never before been in a press-room. This one was doubtless the humblest of its type, but newspapers were printed here, and that fact in itself made the place important.

Donatello paused in his work and looked at his visitor inquiringly.

“I ain’t never be’n in a printin’ shop before,” said Chick, “and I kind o’ wanted to see what it looked like.”

“Well,” replied the man, “it is not so much on the looks. But here it is from which great ideas have gone forth in print.”

“Do you write ’em all?” asked the boy abruptly.

Donatello laughed a little. “I do not write all that which appears in my paper,” he replied. “But the editorial; yes, that I write.”

Chick drew from his pocket a copy of The Disinherited and pointed to the article which had disturbed him.

“Did you write that?” he demanded.

The editor laughed again. “Yes, that have I written. Do you like it? No?”

“No,” replied the boy. “I don’t like it. That’s what I’ve come for; to tell you I don’t like it. Them fellows ain’t no tools of nobody. They’re jest soldiers. They obey orders. If them strikers don’t want to get hurt, let ’em behave theirselves. That’s all they is to it.”

Donatello swung himself around on his stool and stared at General Chick in amazement. Then his look of surprise gave way to one of amusement. He clasped his hands over his knee and smiled.

“You champion the cause of militarism?” he asked.

“I don’t know what that is,” replied the boy. “But I b’lieve in the National Guard, and I b’lieve in Company E, and I expect to jine it myself the first chance I git.”

“So! you would also the soldier be?”

“Sure I’d be a soldier. Why, the best fellows in town belong to Company E. Don’t you know that?”

“Some good fellows which I know, they belong; that’s true. And when it is that you also have belonged, there will be yet one more. Your first lieutenant, him, in all the city there is no choicer man. Brains he has. Heart he has. Wisdom he has. What else would you?”

Donatello flung his hands into the air, as though the last word had been said in the way of encomium, slid down from his stool, went over and sat in a chair by a littered table, and motioned to Chick to occupy another chair near by which long ago had lost all semblance of a back.

“Now you’ve said somethin’,” replied Chick, seating himself. “Ain’t no finer young man in Fairweather ’n what Lieutenant ’Cormack is. Him an’ me’s been friends sence the first day he come into the comp’ny.”

“And he and I, we have been friends since the first day we have met with each other. Ha! Since we have the mutual friend, you and I, we also should be friends. Is it not so?”

If Chick had ever felt any real animosity toward the editor of The Disinherited he found himself now suddenly bereft of it. He could not look into the frank, friendly eyes of this young man, or note his winning smile, and harbor any grievance against him.

“Sure!” he said; “I ain’t got nothin’ ag’inst you, ’cept what you put in the paper ’bout the Guard, and I guess you know now that you was on the wrong track, don’t you?”

Donatello did not answer the question. A new thought seemed to have come to him.

“Where is it that you work?” he asked.

“Oh,” replied the boy, “I do odd chores around mornin’s. I ain’t got no stiddy, all-day job.”

“How would you like it; an all-day job?”

“Doin’ what?”

“Working here with me.”

“Printin’ the paper?”

“Yes. Running the press. Washing the type. Sweeping the room. Going on the errand, peddling the paper. Oh, a what you call the general utility man. A man of all the work.”

Chick threw a comprehensive glance around the room, as if to take in the situation.

“You want a man?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How much you want to pay?”

“For the all-day job?”

“No, for half a day. I got customers I can’t give up mornin’s.”

“Well, let me see! I pay you forty cents for the half day.”

“’Tain’t enough,” replied Chick promptly.

“Fifty cents.”

“That’s more like it; but you’ll have to stretch it a little furder.”

“Fifty-five. I will not pay more.”

“All right! I’m your huckleberry.”

Chick’s eyes snapped, and a flush came into his cheeks. Here was a steady job facing him on his own terms. He did not doubt his ability to handle it. He felt that the employment would be congenial. He accepted the place without question. There was more discussion concerning the nature of the duties which the new employee was to perform, his hours of labor, and the day on which he should begin work. But these matters were easily settled, and when Chick rose to go the bargain was complete. He felt now that he had taken his proper place in the army of workers. He had what he had long wanted, a regular job. Moreover, the nature of his task, that of assisting in the preparation and publication of a weekly journal, was such as to justify him in assuming an air of importance commensurate with the character of his duties.

When he reached the head of the stairs on his way out a thought came to him and he turned back.

“I want it understood,” he said to Donatello, “that, so long as I’m helpin’ to git out this paper, they mustn’t be no jumpin’ on the National Guard, nor on Company E. I won’t stand for it.”

“And if it should be so that there is?” Donatello’s voice was smooth and musical.

“I’ll resign my position,” declared Chick.

“Very well! That bridge we will cross when we have reached it.”

The next day General Chick was added to the working staff of The Disinherited.

On a day late in April, Hal received a note from Donatello asking him to call that evening at the printing-room of The Disinherited. It was not an unusual request, nor was it the first time that Hal had visited the quarters of the social radical.

At the street door he found General Chick who was looking up and down the walk and apparently waiting for him. Chick had been for some months now in Donatello’s employ. He did miscellaneous work about the place, went on errands, washed type, delivered papers, put his hands to almost every task that a boy with a lop-shoulder and a crooked back could be expected to do. He was not overworked. Donatello treated him kindly, paid him living wages, and made a friend of him. All in all it was the best job Chick had ever had.

When he let McCormack in he closed and locked the street door before going with him down the dimly lighted hall to the printing-room. It was in this room that Hal found, in Donatello’s company, two men whom he knew by sight, but whom he had not before personally met. One of them was distinctly a foreigner; big, muscular, shrewd-eyed, with black hair hanging to his shoulders, and a large, loose, black tie floating from his throat down onto his breast. He was introduced simply as Gabriel. The other man, so far as appearance and accent went, was a well-to-do American. His name was given as Kranich. Donatello explained that they had come in from a neighboring city to assist the local leaders in bringing the strike to a successful conclusion. They wanted to know from Lieutenant McCormack what the attitude of the soldiers of the National Guard would be in the event of their being called out on strike duty. More specifically they wanted to know what the attitude of Lieutenant McCormack himself would be, in the not impossible event of his being in command of Company E on such an occasion.

Donatello interrupted the conversation at this point by asking Chick to go and lock the door leading into the hall. This was an important conference, he said, and it was not worth while to run the risk of interruption.

So Chick locked the door, and came back and sat down on a wobbly stool, by a dilapidated case, and listened, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to the discussion.

“You know it is our theory,” explained Kranich, “that the workmen are as much owners of their jobs as the employers are owners of their plants; and that they have as much right to prevent other men from taking those jobs away from them as the mill owners would have to prevent other capitalists from seizing their mills by force. What we want to know is, in case of an attempt by our men to resume their jobs, or to prevent other men from appropriating them, what your personal attitude would be if you were called out, as an officer of the National Guard, to prevent disorder. Would your guns be pointed toward us or toward our enemies?”

“I would,” replied Hal, “obey the orders of my superior officer.”

“Suppose you, yourself, were in command of the company?”

“I would do my duty as a Guardsman.”

“Exactly! And, what would be your duty? to protect honest workmen in their efforts to obtain possession of the tools of their employment, or to bayonet and shoot us at the behest of capitalists and scabs?”

Before Hal could reply Donatello interrupted. He feared that McCormack might be antagonized by such blunt and embarrassing questions. He knew, from long experience, that persuasion, not bluff, was the weapon with which to fight the prejudices of the young Guardsman.

“You do not need so closely to question him!” he exclaimed. “I know him. He is safe. He believes in the solidarity of labor the world over. His sympathies, they are with our men in this struggle for the human rights. Is it not so, Lieutenant?”

“It is decidedly so,” replied Hal.

“And he will that way interpret his duty as officer to do least injury to us, his brothers. Is it not so, Lieutenant?”

“That is correct,” replied Hal. “I do not intend to fail in the performance of my duty in any quarter.”

Donatello turned toward his guests with a wide sweep of his hands.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “with that we must be content.”

But it was an hour later, after much discussion of economic problems, and the methods by which they were to be solved, that Chick unlocked the door and let Lieutenant McCormack out into the street. And neither of them saw the figure of a man patiently waiting in a dark recess two doors away, a man who had seen all of Donatello’s guests arrive, and who was waiting to see them all depart.

Later on, as Hal thought over his visit to the printing shop, he felt that he had said nothing that he did not fully believe, that he had made no promise either of action or inaction that he did not stand ready to fulfil. It was very true that his sympathies were with the working class of men. He seconded all their efforts for their own betterment. He felt that some day labor, united, harmonious, acting in concert, under one leadership the world over, would move its enormous body, would rise, tremble, stretch itself like some great giant, and in the process would upheave society; and that out of the tumult and confusion and wreckage would arise a new social order in which every man would be the equal of every other man in all things material and immaterial with which a beneficent Creator had endowed them. It was a dream, perhaps. Donatello had dreamed it. His two visitors had dreamed it. A hundred thousand men with toil-hardened hands, under the shadow of the Stars and Stripes, had dreamed it. Countless millions in the old world, under the iron heel of autocracy, had died dreaming it. Yet, some day, notwithstanding the natural perverseness of the human heart, the dream was bound to come true. So the dreamers believed; so they taught, and to that end they struggled and fought.

But the question of immediate moment to Halpert McCormack, a question that pressed ever more and more persistently into his heart and conscience, was, whether he, with opinions and beliefs so radically at variance with those of the governing class of his country, had a moral right to belong to, much less to be an officer in, the National Guard. And the more he pondered upon this question, the more imperative it seemed to him to be that he should put an end to a situation so anomalous, a situation which in certain contingencies that might at any moment arise, would become awkward, acute and impossible. His military connection was the only link that still held him to the world of conservatism; he might as well snap it and be entirely free.

So, without consultation with any one, for he had no friend with whom he felt that it would be profitable for him to consult, he prepared for the final step.

He entered the office of Captain Murray on an afternoon preceding the weekly drill, and asked for a private interview. His request was granted. The captain looked worried and apprehensive.

“I have been expecting you to come,” he said. “If you hadn’t done so I should have sent for you. But I’ll hear your errand first. What is it?”

“It is nothing of great importance,” replied Hal. “I simply want to show you this paper which I have decided to send to-day to Colonel Wagstaff.”

Captain Murray took the paper, unfolded it slowly, and read it aloud:

Captain Murray finished reading the paper and looked up wearily and anxiously at Hal.

“I have been expecting this,” he said. “I am not greatly surprised. But—it comes too late.”

“Why too late, Captain?”

“Because charges have already been filed against you, and a court martial demanded. I suppose you would not want to retire under fire even though you should be permitted to do so.”

“I don’t know. It would depend on the nature of the charges. May I see a copy of the complaint?”

“Certainly!”

Captain Murray turned to his desk, drew a long envelope from a pigeonhole, removed a formal-looking document therefrom, and handed the document to Lieutenant McCormack to read.