"Oh! I'm going now, but wait."
He walked out, and I was left with the knowledge that I had one powerful enemy.
I was soon to know Mr. Collis McSheen better, as he was also to know me better.
A few days after this I was walking along and about to enter my office when a man accosted me at the entrance and asked if I could tell him of a good lawyer.
I told him I was one myself, though I had the grace to add that there were many more, and I named several of the leading firms in the city.
"Well, I guess you'll do. I was looking for you. You are the one she sent me to," he said doubtfully, when I had told him my name. He was a weather-beaten little Scotchman, very poor and hard up; but there was something in his air that dignified him. He had a definite aim, and a definite wrong to be righted. The story he told me was a pitiful one. He had been in this country several years and had a place in a locomotive-shop somewhere East, and so long as he had had work, had saved money. But they "had been ordered out," he said, and after waiting around finding that the strike had failed, he had come on here and had gotten a place in a boiler-shop, but they "had been ordered out" again, "just as I got my wife and children on and was getting sort of fixed up," he added. Then he had resigned from the union and had got another place, but a man he had had trouble with back East was "one of the big men up here now," and he had had him turned out because he did not "belong to the union." He was willing to join the union now, but "Wringman had had him turned down." Then he had gotten a place as a driver. But he had been ill and had lost his place, and since then he had not been able to get work, "though the preacher had tried to help him." He did not seem to complain of this loss of his place.
"The wagon had to run," he said, but he and his wife, too, had been ill, and the baby had died and the expenses of the burial had been "something." He appeared to take it as a sort of ultimate decree not to be complained of—only stated. He mentioned it simply by way of explanation, and spoke as if it were a mere matter of Fate. And, indeed, to the poor, sickness often has the finality of Fate. During their illness they had sold nearly all their furniture to live on and pay rent. Now he was in arrears; his wife was in bed, his children sick, and his landlord had levied on his furniture that remained for the rent. At the last gasp he had come to see a lawyer.
"I know I owe the rent," he said, "but the beds won't pay it and the loan company's got all the rest."
I advised him that the property levied on was not subject to levy; but suggested his going to his landlord and laying the case before him.
"If he has any bowels of compassion whatever—" I began, but he interrupted me.