“What!” cried Cheetham, struggling with his rising choler. “You want me to pay men thirty pounds for organizing a strike, that will cost me so dear, and rob me of a whole trade that was worth L300 a year? Why not charge me for the gunpowder you blew up Little with, and spoiled my forge? No, Bayne, no; this is too unjust and too tyrannical. Flesh and blood won't bear it. I'll shut up the works, and go back to my grindstone. Better live on bread and water than live like a slave.”
Redcar took a written paper out of his pocket. “There are the terms written down,” said he, “if you sign them, the strike ends; if you don't, it continues—till you do.”
Cheetham writhed under the pressure. Orders were pouring in; trade brisk; hands scarce. Each day would add a further loss of many pounds for wages, and doubtless raise fresh exactions. He gulped down something very like a sob, and both his hand and his voice shook with strong passion as he took the pen. “I'll sign it; but if ever my turn comes, I'll remember this against you. This shows what they really are, Bayne. Oh, if ever you workmen get power, GOD HELP THE WORLD!”
These words seemed to come in a great prophetic agony out of a bursting heart.
But the representative of the Unions was neither moved by them nor irritated.
“All right,” said he, phlegmatically; “the winner takes his bite: the loser gets his bark: that's reason.”
Henry Little was in his handling-room, working away, with a bright perspective before him, when Bayne knocked at the door, and entered with Redcar. Bayne's face wore an expression so piteous, that Henry divined mischief at once.
“Little, my poor fellow, it is all over. We are obliged to part with you.”
“Cheetham has thrown me over?”
“What could he do? I am to ask you to vacate these rooms, that we may get our half-day out of the grinders.”