"Maybe all the others like you will get killed some day," he concluded.
"Perhaps, John," I answered. "But you'll never kill us all. That's one sure thing. And if by any luck you should do away with all my kind, your own men would take to robbing you on a big scale as they do now on a small one. Here, give me your hand and help me out."
Very likely his answer to my bluff would be my end. But I was tired out, holding my two hundred pounds there in the air with my elbows. Strangely enough, while I watched him, waiting for him to act, and expecting the last blow, I did not seem to care half as much as I should have expected to. I thought of Sarah and the children; I hated to leave the job I had set myself half-done, with a lot of loose ends for other folks to bungle over; and it didn't look inviting down there below. But the fall alone would probably do for me at once, and, personally, my life didn't seem to be of much consequence.
But my anarchist friend made no move. It seemed to trouble him, the way I took his attack. So I gave a great heave, raised myself half up to the girder where he stood, and held out my hand.
He took it! A moment more I found myself standing upright beside my anarchist. The next thing was to induce him to continue the discussion a few floors lower down, where there would be less likelihood of losing our balance in the course of a heated argument. But I sat down, friendly-like, on one of the cross-beams, and began to talk.
"So you are an anarchist? Yes, I helped to hang your friends. I had some doubts about the matter then. But just here, now, after my experience with you, I haven't any at all."
I gave him a good sermon—the gospel of man against man, as I knew it, as I had learned it in my struggles for fortune. I showed him how I was more bound than he,—bound hand and foot, for he could run away, and I couldn't. At bottom he wasn't a bad sort of fellow, only easily excited and loose-minded. In conclusion I said:—
"Now we'll just step down. I am going home to get some supper."
I started, and he followed on meekly after me. It was a rather creepy feeling I had, going over those stairs! They were perfectly dark by this time, and steep.
"You'll try to fix me for this?" the fellow said, when we reached the first floor, and I had started toward the office.