“But this will never do, padrone,” said the scout master. “Once they start to using bombs and they lose the sympathy of the community. You understand what that means. If your men even hope to win this strike they must be held in and kept from violence. So far it has all been on the other side, and that is going to gain you many friends. The owner of the works will find that he has to call it off and give you living wages. Do you understand that?”
The padrone nodded his head violently.
“Whatever you tell me that will I do, for I know you scouts ver’ good friend to the workingman,” he hastened to say.
“All right,” Hugh told him promptly, “then first of all get a bucket of water, and soak every one of these things in it so as to render them harmless.”
“Here’s just what you want, right in this corner,” remarked Billy, pointing to a half barrel used as a tub, and which was more than two-thirds full of suspicious looking water, but which could be made useful to “pull the teeth” of the dangerous bombs.
The padrone not only dumped the gaspipe infernal machines in the tub but followed with every article connected with their manufacture that he could lay hands on.
“Now, tell what you want me do next?” he asked Hugh, as though he meant to leave no stone unturned in order to follow out the orders of this energetic young Boy Scout whose coming with his comrades had meant so much for the people under his care.
“You know who the men are who have been doing this black work, padrone?” Hugh asserted, looking the old man straight in the eye.
For a few seconds the old man wavered, and then unconditionally surrendered.
“Si, young sigñor, I know,” he admitted.