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A RESPECTED FELLOW CITIZEN.

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"I did, sir."

"You watched near the bank last Tuesday when the money was delivered; you crept to the outer door and espied Mr. Burroughs secreting the money about his person; that he fled by the rear door, and on his horse fled to the hills?"

"Very correct, sir," Goodley readily confirmed. "I took after him hotfooted, and it was a chase to the finish; but finally I lit onto him hidden in a shack up the canyon."

"Gentlemen," broke in Burroughs, rendered desperate, "am I on trial? Am I not to be heard in defense; am I not to have a chance to prove I'm not guilty?"

"Not guilty!" sneered Careps, "and proof positive ?"

"Well," counseled the Judge, "perhaps it would be more in tune with the law that he have an attorney present?"

"He don't need a lawyer," decided Goodley. "I'll give him a chance to prove his innocence," he laughed. "Will one of you gentlemen lock the door and hand the key to me?"

"Don't want to chance the fellow's escaping," guessed the storekeeper to himself as he passed the key across the table.

Goodley placed his chair between the door and the table. He took from his pockets a bundle of documents, and near to his hand he rested his revolver.

Adjusting his spectacles, he commenced to speak, while the others, for

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the most part open-mouthed with wonder, bent forward to catch his words.

"Three years ago, gentlemen, I owned the Sunnyside ranch, then worth nearly forty thousand dollars. Unfortunately, I went into a mining deal with Mr. Careps and lost my all. To-day, gentlemen, Mr. Careps owns the ranch!"

"I object-I strongly object!" cried the president, leaping from his chair. "What has your mining losses to do with the robbing of the Citizens' Bank?”

Goodley turned towards the others. "I am telling only that which properly belongs to the subject under discussion. Last October," he went on, unmindful of the fact that the president was still muttering his objections, "I was in the city, and there ran across an old-time miner who was once in the employ of Mr. Careps. Before this man died, he gave me a valuable document, and, furthermore, he made a deposition. Also"

"A roundabout way to get at the bank robbery, by Godfrey," whispered Speculator Coos in the ear of Storekeeper Tinker, as Goodley paused to consult his memoranda.

"Also," the narrator continued, "these two papers will prove my right to talk up the mining deal."

"Cracky!" the storekeeper guessed, "Burroughs was in the mining deal."

"Couldn't be," returned the Judge in the same low tone. "Don't be impatient; we'll soon get at the inside of the pie."

"I'll bet you a hat, Judge, that he's robbed the bank before," the opinionated Tinker challenged. He was about still further to elaborate his belief when Goodley resumed:

"Three weeks since, and in this very room, I had a proposition made to me. It was at night, past the hour when most of you were asleep, and—”

"What you are babbling, sir," shot in Careps hotly, "is irrelevant. Prove this young man as the robber of this bank! That's your business, sir."

"I appeal to the others," was Goodley's rejoinder.

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THE CHRISTENING OF GOLDEN GATE.

"I'm inclined to hear you out," concurred the Judge. "What say you?" nodding to the several men.

All were of the same opinion.

"As I have said," resumed Goodley, "I was in this room, and with me was that man!" Jumping from his chair, he thrust his finger almost in the face of the president. "He made me a proposition, a money-making proposition," he qualified, with a smile. "He drew a contract which he signed and which" He proceeded no further, for Careps, smiting the table heavily, blustered:

"In the devil's name, gentlemen, are we obliged to listen to this fellow's tattle? We want facts; not a lot of old-woman twaddle!”

"Proceed, Mr. Goodley," advised the Judge. "I am becoming very much interested."

"To make the story short, I submit Mr. Careps' contract, together with the papers I obtained from the miner."

"Damn you!" shouted Careps Goodley paused. "I'll have you in limbo mighty sudden!" As he uttered this threat, he made a dash for the papers, but was caught and forced into his chair, where he sat thoroughly intimidated.

"Gentlemen, David Careps planned.

the robbing of the bank. He arranged all the details, and while I was carrying out my part, he was concealed in the rear of this room, watching operations. He salted the Golden Bess mine; he swindled you and me out of our money. To prove his rascality, I bamboozled him into the belief that I would, for a paltry sum, carry out his planning. In short," he laughed, "our respected fellow-citizen is a candidate for the State's prison. Jim, bring me the sack. This," as he took a package from the bag, "is the money intact. Now, Careps," he demanded, "either dig up what we men have lost by your rascality, or take your medicine!"

Judge Bascom leaped to his feet, exclaiming: "And what is more, you resign the presidency of the Citizens' Bank at once!"

"I'll go still further," Storekeeper Tinker supplemented. "I'll move that Mr. Careps' resignation be accepted, and that Mr. Hart, our present cashier, be elected to the presidency."

"Just one moment, gentlemen," broke in Speculator Coos, "I wish to amend Mr. Tinker's motion by adding that Mr. James Burroughs be elected cashier of the Citizens' Bank."

The amended motion carried.

THE CHRISTENING OF GOLDEN GATE

I marked the sun god's parting glance
Touch with his fire thy bosom cold,
Nor longer deemed a happy chance
Had named thee Gate of Gold.

It is thy name by right divine,
Bestowed upon thy natal day

By Nature in a mood benign—
Her christening font, the sunset way.

I. ALMA MARTIN.

A Chip of the Old Block

M

By Arthur M. L. Brilant

ARBLE-HEARTED and relentless though he was, Philander C. Andrews, president of the Andrews Steel Mills, nevertheless entertained serious misgivings as he anxiously watched the hands of the small clock on his desk creep nearer to the hour of the appointment with a committee of strikers.

Physical fear was unknown to him. The lack of a proper plan to pursue in handling the committee worried him most. His brain was devising and discarding plan after plan, yet nothing feasible presented itself, and he finally contented himself with the fact that he had the upper hand, and was in a position to dictate terms.

With his hands tightly clasped behind his back, he walked up and down the room. The wrinkles and crows' feet about his eyes and mouth had aged him ten years. The strike was a serious drain on his vitality, and he was nearly exhausted. The loss of profits owing to their inability to fill orders and contracts preyed on his mind. Suddenly he heard a commotion in the front office.

"But I can't let you in, Mr. Andrews," he heard his secretary remonstrate with his son-the son who had taken sides with the strikers in the big steel strike. "Your father has ordered me to keep everybody out of his office, and not allow any one to disturb him."

"Bonehead!" muttered the elder Andrews, angrily, as he strode towards the door. Before he reached it, he heard a sharp exclamation, a thud, as though somebody had hit the floor.

Then the door was suddenly flung open. On the threshold stood his son with eight men at his back-the strikers' committee.

"We have come to try to settle the strike, father. You have fooled the newspapers into saying that the strike does not bother you, but we know better. Financially we are in bad shape, and, considering all, we have come to reach an understanding. Our terms remain the same. What do you say, father?"

"Old Man" Andrews was of a blustering and profane manner. He also prided himself on his ability to judge a man. He came to the quick conclusion that only a blustering and threatening manner would win. In his eagerness to curse and threaten, he had forgotten that the spokesman of the committee was of his own flesh and blood, and of the same temperament.

He sprang from his chair, his face livid with anger and his fingers twitching convulsively, as if impatient to embed themselves in an enemy's throat.

"Settle!" he shouted. "Settle! Why should we settle? The mills are runing at full capacity. We are filling our orders promptly. We don't want you fellows. You didn't want to come back when I called you and offered to compromise on a two cent advance, and now-now," he cried vehemently, his eyes blazing, "now when you feel the grip of hunger and cold and starvation, you beg me to take you back! And you won't even compromise. Is that loyalty? Go to the Devil."

"Mr. Andrews, you've got the wrong

idea about us and the strike," cut in one of the committee. "We work with the idea of a high class product uppermost in our minds, and then we think of our own gain. Can you imagine rearing a family of five on sixteen to eighteen dollars a week? That's what I've been trying to do, and it's impossible. I speak because my case is typical, and yet when we ask for five cents more per hour you complain that we are playing you false. I tell you, Mr. Andrews, it's hell to live on the wages you pay us." He stopped suddenly, in confusion at having dared to speak so openly to his former employer. He backed up towards the rest of the men and wiped the sweat from his brow. His colleagues nodded approval.

The "Old Man" sat bowed in his chair and said not a word.

"Well, father, you've heard what our circumstances are; what do you say? Do we go back to work to-morrow or not?" asked his son.

But the fire of bitterness had not been quelled. Andrews jumped up and began a tirade on workingmen in general. He railed against them and their families, while the men's faces went white with anger. By a supreme effort they held themselves in check. Andrews must have noticed the red flag of danger in the men's eyes, for he suddenly stopped and glowered at his son.

"Traitor!" he shouted. "Traitor! Get out of my sight. I never want to see you again. You are no longer my son. Go!" and he shook his fist in his son's face, and fell in his chair, exhausted.

"Father," rejoined his son, "I swear I will never cross your threshold again until the strike is won by the men. Good-bye!" He walked out of the room, his fellow-committeemen following him. The last man shut the door quietly, and "Old Man" Andrews crumpled limply into his chair.

II.

In the front apartment on the second floor of an overcrowded tenement, a

young woman was busily engaged in the preparation of the evening meal. She was handicapped in her efforts by a six weeks' old baby boy, who preferred to lie in her arms rather than in the washtub cradle.

Suddenly the baby began to to cry. "Hush, Philander," she admonished him, holding him tighter to her breast. "Papa will be home soon." But the child continued wailing with all the power of his little lungs. She walked the room with him, and was gradually quieting him when she heard the sharp cry, "Uxtry!"

Instantly she was at the window, beckoning to a small, dirty urchin with copies of the Evening Chronicle, with the latest news of the strike-news that interested her more than all the rest of the paper.

On the front page in large scarehead type she read: "President Andrews Threatened! Governor May Call Out Troops! Strikers Incite Riots!"

She glanced hurriedly over the lead with a blanched face: "Threats to blow up the steel mills and to destroy the handsome residence of Philander C. Andrews, president of the Andrews Steel Mills, is the latest development in the strike war being waged by the foundry men against the so-called steel trust. An anonymous note received by Mr. Andrews this morning states in brief terms that if the strike is not settled within twenty-four hours, the mills and his handsome residence on Riverside Drive will be destroyed by dynamite."

A mist filled her eyes. She dashed it away with her sleeve, and scanned a paragraph in the middle of the "story:"

"A detail of Pinkerton men from New York is expected to arrive this morning to aid in protecting the Andrews property and family."

Further down she read: "A wellknown steel man, close to Mr. Andrews, is authority for the statement that since the shut-down of the mills, several valuable South American contracts and over $2,000,000 in profits have been lost because of the inability

A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK.

to fill orders." She read this paragraph over twice, and her heart was filled with gladness, although she was ashamed of her elation.

Then she re-read the paragraph of the anonymous note and repeated this three times before she fully understood it. Her face went white with anger.

"It can't be," she cried angrily. "That note's a lie. It's all a lie! There is not a man among the strikers who would dare to send such a thing. It's another clever move on Andrews' part to shift public sentiment. Oh, God!" she moaned, "I wonder when it will all end." Her thoughts were rudely changed by the shouts of a mob outside. She darted to the window and saw her husband say something to them; then he turned and walked into the house. He opened the door to his flat, and without the customary kiss threw his hat and coat on the bed, and sat down heavily in his chair, overwrought with the problem before him. Her heart beat fast, but she knew him too well to ask questions when he was in that mood. She patiently waited a few minutes; then seeing no sign of talking on his part, she asked: "Well, John, what did you do? Wouldn't he settle?"

"Well, little girl," his voice sounded tired. "It looks mighty bad. Father refused to consider the proposition, as I thought he would. He was mad clear through. He wouldn't listen to reason. He said that we foundry men were-oh, well, what's the use. I broke up with him. I swore never to cross his threshold again until we had won the strike. I guess the jig's up. Money is scarce with us and the kidlets want food. What can we do? Why, we must win the strike. They are losing money fast, and they'll soon come around to our way of thinking." He got up from his chair and paced

the room.

His wife stood at one side and eyed him approvingly. He had proved his mettle. He had proved that he was of the same loaf as the steel workers, and she-the daughter of a foundry man

365

-was justly proud of her husband, the son of her father's employer.

"John, I love you and I am proud of you. Keep up the fight. You must win, and you will." She embraced him and kissed him. "Why-why, what cut your head?" she cried, paling and noting a gash on the back of his head, from which the blood slowly trickled. It was only a flesh wound, but, woman-like, she feared the worst.

"Oh, nothing," he returned. "It's only a little memento that a strikebreaker left. But you ought to see him." She ran to a cupboard, took out a piece of cloth, and bound his head. Suddenly he caught sight of the headlines on the paper. He read them and smiled.

"You don't believe that about the note, do you, Minnie? And about the riots-that's another lie. We were returning from father's office and passed by the mills to tell the rest of the fellows what the outcome was, when the toughs attacked us, and of course we had to defend ourselves, and yet the Governor-well, I'll be hanged." He broke into laughter and bestowed a kiss on his young wife. They were standing by the cradle and gazing at the tiny bit of humanity when there came a knock on the door.

The door opened, and his father stepped into the room.

III.

"Well, father, have you changed your mind? Are you going to end this miserable strike?"

"No," cried the elder Andrews hotly -"the men can all go to blazes. We don't want them and won't settle. But that isn't what I came here for. I came to ask you to come back home. I am sorry for what I said this afternoon, and will forgive everything if you will only return." His voice became calm and fatherly. "Your mother is ill, and wants you to come back. She loves you. This is no place for you," indicating his meaning with a sweep of his arm. "Give up this life of poverty and return to your friends,

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