“If your son likes,” continued the vicar. “The fact is, Mrs Glaire, the people are getting furious against him, and without going into the question of right or wrong, the sufferings of their wives and children are maddening the men. This lock-out ought to end.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Glaire, sighing, “it ought.”
“It was a dastardly trick, that destruction of the machinery, but I believe it was the work of one brain, and one pair of hands.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I have had endless communications with the locked-out men, and, as far as I can judge character, I find them very rough, very independent, but, at the same time, frank and honest, and I cannot find one amongst them who does not look me full in the face with a clear unblushing eye, and say, ‘Parson, if I know’d who did that dirty sneaking business, I’d half kill him.’ This in these or similar words.”
Mrs Glaire bowed her head.
“Yes,” she said; “you have given the men’s character in those words, but they are cruelly bitter against my son.”
“They are,” said the vicar, hesitating to tell his news.
“And they think he has persuaded Daisy Banks to leave her home.”
“Almost to a man, though her father holds out.”