"For why? Because Ed Hall is like me, that's for why. He's got character,
that's what he's got."

Growing weary of his boasting and the silence of his audience, Jim started
to walk in at the door, but when one of the workmen, a pale man of fifty
with a graying mustache, spoke, he turned to listen. "You're a suck, a suck
and a lickspittle, that's what you are," said the pale man, his voice
trembling with passion.

Jim ran through the crowd of men and knocked the speaker to the sidewalk
with a blow of his fist. Two of the other workmen seemed about to take up
the cause of their fallen brother, but when in spite of their threats Jim
stood his ground, they hesitated. They went to help the pale workman to his
feet, and Jim went into the shop and closed the door. Climbing onto his
horse he went to work, and the men went off along the sidewalk, still
threatening to do what they had not done when the opportunity offered.

Joe worked in silence beside his employee and night began to settle down
over the disturbed town. Above the clatter of many voices in the street
outside could be heard the loud voice of the socialist orator who had taken
up his stand for the evening at a nearby corner. When it had become quite
dark outside, the old harness maker climbed down from his horse and going
to the front door opened it softly and looked up and down the street. Then
he closed it again and walked toward the rear of the shop. In his hand
he held his harness-maker's knife, shaped like a half moon and with an
extraordinarily sharp circular edge. The harness maker's wife had died
during the year before and since that time he had not slept well at night.
Often for a week at a time he did not sleep at all, but lay all night with
wide-open eyes, thinking strange, new thoughts. In the daytime and when Jim