There was trouble amongst the Dallory workpeople. It had been looming in the distance for some time before it came. No works throughout the kingdom had been more successfully carried on than the North Works. The men were well paid; peace and satisfaction had always reigned between them and their employers. But when certain delegates, or emissaries, or whatever they may please to call themselves, arrived stealthily at Dallory from the Trades\' unions, and took up stealthy abode in the place, and whispered stealthy whispers into the ears of the men, peace was at an end.

It matters not to trace the working of these insidious whispers, or how the poison spread. Others have done it far more effectively and to the purpose than I could do it. Sufficient to say that the Dallory workpeople caught the infection prevailing amongst other bodies of men--which the public, to its cost, has of late years known too much of--and they joined the ranks of the disaffected. First there had been doubt, and misgiving, and wavering; then agitation; then dissatisfaction; then parleying with their master, Richard North; then demands to be paid more and do less work. In vain Richard, with his strong sense, argued and reasoned: showing them, in all kindness, how mistaken was the course they were entering on, and what must come of it. They listened with respect, for he was liked and esteemed; but they would not give in. It had been privately told Richard that much argument and holding-out had been carried on with the Trades\' union emissaries, some of whom were ever hovering over Dallory like birds of prey: the workmen wanting to insist on the sense of Richard North\'s views of things, the others speciously disproving it. But it came to nothing. The workmen yielded to their despotic rulers as submissively as others have done, and Richard\'s words were set at nought. They were like so many tame sheep blindly following their leader. The agitation, beginning about the time of Bessy North\'s marriage, continued for many months; it then came to an issue; and for several weeks now, the works had been shut up.

For the men had struck. North and Gass had large contracts on hand, and they could not be completed. Unless matters took a speedy turn, masters and men would alike be ruined. The ruin of the first involved that of the last.

Mrs. Gass took things more equably than Richard North. In one sense she had less need to take them otherwise. Her prosperity did not depend on the works. A large sum of hers was certainly invested in them; but a larger was in other and safe securities. If the works and their capital went to ruin, the only difference it would make to Mrs. Gass was, that she would have so much the less money to leave behind her when she died. In this sense therefore Mrs. Gass could take things calmly: but in regard to the men\'s conduct she was far more outspoken and severe than Richard.

Dallory presented a curious scene. In former days, during work time not an idle man was to be found: the village had looked almost deserted, excepting for the children playing about. Now the narrow thoroughfares were blocked with groups of men; talking seriously, or chaffing with each other, as might be; most of them smoking, and all looking utterly sick of the passing hours. Work does not tire a man--or woman either--half as much as idleness.

At first the holiday was an agreeable novelty; the six days were each a Sunday, as well as the seventh; and the men and women lived in clover. Not one family in twenty had been sufficiently provident to put by money for a rainy day, good though their wages had been; but the Trades\' unions took care of their new protégés, and supplied them with funds. But as the weeks went on, and Richard North gave no sign of relenting--that is, of taking the men on again at their own terms--the funds did not come in so liberally. Husbands, not accustomed to being stinted; wives, not knowing how to make sixpence suffice for a shilling, might be excused if they felt a little put out; and they began to take things to the pawnbroker\'s. Mr. Ducket, the respectable functionary who presided over the interests of the three gilt balls at Dallory, rubbed his hands complacently as he took the articles in. Being gifted with a long sharp nose, he scented the good time coming.

One day, in passing the shop, Mrs. Gass saw three women in it. She walked in herself; and, without ceremony, demanded what they were pledging. The women slunk away, hiding their property under their aprons, and leaving their errand to be completed another time. That Mrs. Gass or their master, Richard North, should see them at this work, brought humiliation to their minds and shame to their cheeks. Richard North and Mrs. Gass had both told them (to their utter disbelief) that it would come to this: and to be detected in the actual fact of pledging, seemed very like defeat.

"So you\'ve began, have you, Ducket?" commenced Mrs. Gass.

"Began what, ma\'am?" asked Ducket; a little, middle-aged man with watery eyes and weak hair; always deferent in manner to the wealthy Mrs. Gass.

"Began what! Why, the pledging. I told \'em all they\'d come to the pawnshop."

"It\'s them that have begun it, ma\'am; not me."

"Where do you suppose it will end, Ducket?"

Ducket shook his head meekly, intimating that he couldn\'t suppose anything about it. He was naturally meek in disposition, and the brow-beating he habitually underwent in the course of business from his customers of the fairer sex had subdued his spirit.

"It\'ll just end in their pawning every earthly thing inside their homes, leaving them to the four naked walls," said Mrs. Gass. "And the next move \'ll be into the work\'us."

In the presence of Mrs. Gass, Ducket did not choose to show any sense of latent profit this wholesale pledging might bring to him. On the contrary, he affected to see nothing but gloom in the matter.

"A nice prospect for us rate-payers, ma\'am, that \'ould be! Taxes be heavy enough, as it is, in Dallory parish, without having all these workmen and their families throw\'d on us."

"If the taxes was of my mind, Ducket, they\'d let the men starve, rather than help \'em. When able-bodied artisans have plenty of work to do, and won\'t do it, it\'s time they was taught a lesson. As sure as you and I are standing here, them misguided men will come to want a crust."

"Well, I\'d not wish \'em as bad as that," said Ducket, who, apart from the hardness induced by his trade, was rather softhearted. "Perhaps Mr. Richard North \'ll give in."

"Mr. Richard North give in!" echoed Mrs. Gass. "Don\'t upset your brains with perhapsing that, Ducket. Who ought to give in--looking at the rights and wrongs of the question--North and Gass, or the men? Tell me that."

"Well, I think the men are wrong," acknowledged the pawnbroker, smoothing down his white linen apron. "And foolish too."

Mrs. Gass nodded several times, a significant look on her pleasant face. She wore a top-knot of white feathers, and they bowed majestically with the movement.

"Maybe they\'ll live to see it, too. They will, unless their senses come back to \'em pretty quickly. Look here, Ducket: what I was about to say is this--don\'t be too free to take their traps in."

Ducket\'s face assumed a mournful cast, but Mrs. Gass was looking at him, evidently waiting for an answer.

"I don\'t see my way clear to refusing things when they are brought to me, Mrs. Gass, ma\'am. The women \'ould only go off to Whitborough and pledge \'em there."

"Then they should go--for me."

"Yes, ma\'am," rejoined the man, not knowing what else to say.

"I\'m not particular squeamish, Ducket; trade\'s trade; and a pawnbroker must live as well as other people. I don\'t say but what the money he lends does sometimes a world of good to them that has no other help to turn to--and, maybe, through no fault of their own, poor things. But when it comes to dismantling homes by the score, and leaving families as destitute as ever they were when they came into this blessed world, that\'s different. And I wouldn\'t like to have it on my conscience, Ducket, though I was ten pawnbrokers."

Mrs. Gass quitted the shop with the last words, leaving Ducket to digest them. In passing North Inlet, she saw a group of the disaffected collected together, and turned out of her way to speak to them. Mrs. Gass was quite at home, so to say, with every one of the men at the works; more so than a lady of better birth and breeding could ever have been. She found fault with them, and commented on their failings as familiarly as though she had been one of themselves. Of the whole body of workpeople, not more than three or four had consistently raised their voices against the strike. These few would willingly have gone to work again, and thought it a terrible hardship that they could not do so; but of course the refusal of the majority to return practically closed the gates to all. Richard North could not keep his business going with only half-a-dozen pairs of hands in it.

"Well," began Mrs. Gass, "what\'s the time o\' day with you men?"

The men parted at the address, and touched their caps. The "time o\' day" meant, as they knew, anything but the literal question.

"How much longer do you intend to lead the lives of gentlefolk?"

"It\'s what we was a-talking on, ma\'am--how much longer Mr. Richard North \'ll keep the gates closed again\' us," returned one whose name was Webb, speaking boldly but respectfully.

"Don\'t you put the saddle on the wrong horse, Webb; I told you that the other day. Mr. Richard North didn\'t close the gates again\' you: you closed \'em again\' yourselves by walking out. He\'d open them to you tomorrow, and be glad to do it."

"Yes, ma\'am, but on the old terms," debated the man, looking obstinately at Mrs. Gass.

"What have you to say again\' the old terms?" demanded that lady of the men collectively. "Haven\'t they kept you and your families in comfort for years and years? Where was your grumblings then? I heard of none."

"But things is changed," said Webb.

"Not a bit of it," retorted Mrs. Gass. "It\'s you men that have changed; not the things. I\'ll put a question to yon, Webb--to all of you--and it won\'t do you any harm to answer it. If these Trade union men had never come amongst you with their persuasions and doctrines, should you, or should you not, have been at your work now in content and peace? Be honest, Webb, and reply."

"I suppose so," confessed Webb.

"You know so," corrected Mrs. Gass. "It is as Mr. Richard said the other day to me--the men are led away by a chimera, which means a false fancy, Webb; a sham. There\'s the place"--pointing in the direction of the works--"and there\'s your work, waiting for you to do it. Mr. Richard will give you the same wages that he has always given; you say you won\'t go to work unless he gives more: which he can\'t afford to do. And there it rests; you, and him, and the business, all at a standstill."

"And likely to be at a standstill, ma\'am," returned Webb, but always respectfully.

"Very well; let\'s take it at that," said Mrs. Gass, with equanimity. "Let\'s take it that it lasts, this state of things. What\'s to come of it?"

Webb, an intelligent man and superior workman, looked out straight before him thoughtfully, as if searching a solution to the question. Mrs. Gass, finding he did not answer, resumed:

"If the Trades\' unions can find you permanently in food and drink, and clothes and firing, well and good. Let \............