The striker gripped the two-dollar bill hard in his hand and started for the front door. All thought of hunger had left him now, and he was thinking only of his starving wife, and wondering what would be best for her to eat. Two or three men in citizens' dress, accompanied by a policeman, were coming in just as he was going out, but he was looking at the money and did not notice them. "There goes the thief," said one of the men, and an officer laid a heavy hand on the striker's shoulder. The man looked up into the officer's face with amazement, and asked what the matter was.
"Did you sell an overcoat to this gentleman a little while ago?" asked the policeman.
"Yes," said the striker glancing down at the two dollars he still held in his hand.
"Und yer sthold dot coats fum mine vindo'," said a stout man shoving his fist under the switchman's nose.
"A gentleman gave me the coat in this saloon," urged the striker. "Why, he was here a moment ago."
"Ah! dot's too tin," laughed the tailor, "tak' 'im avay, Meester Bleasman, tak' 'im avay," and the miserable man was hurried away to prison.
That night while the switchman sat in a dark cell his young wife lay dying of cold and hunger in a fireless room, and when an enterprising detective came to search the house for stolen goods on the following morning, he found her there stiff and cold.
Of course no one was to blame in particular, unless it was the well-dressed gentleman who had "helped" the striker, for no one, in particular, was responsible for the strike. It may have been the company and it may have been the brotherhood, or both, but you can't put a railroad company or a brotherhood in jail.
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH
Mr. Watchem's plumber, as might have been expected, had the good taste to leave his modest lodgings after the downfall and death of his landlord, and now the widow was left alone with her two children. She was a gentle soul, who had always been esteemed by her neighbors, but since her husband's desertion to the enemy, she had been shamefully slighted. One would have thought that her present helpless condition would have shielded her from such slights, but it did not.