the stranger. "I cannot possibly camp at the tavern. Its offence is rum, and smells to heaven."

Presently our explorer found a neat, white, two-story, home-like abode on the upper street, overlooking the river. "This promises," he thought. "Here are roses on the porch, a piano, or at least a melodeon, by the parlor-window, and they are insured in the Mutual, as the Mutual's plate announces. Now, if that nice-looking person in black I see setting a table in the back-room is a widow, I will camp here."

Perry Purtett was the name on the door, and opposite the sign of an omnium-gatherum country-store hinted that Perry was deceased. The hint was a broad one. Wade read, "Ringdove, Successor to late P. Purtett."

"It's worth a try to get in here out of the pagan barbarism around. I'll propose

as a lodger to the widow." So said Wade, and rang the bell under the roses. A pretty, slim, delicate, fair-haired maiden answered.

"This explains the roses and the melodeon," thought Wade, and asked, "Can I see your mother?"

Mamma came. "Mild, timid, accustomed to depend on the late Perry, and wants a friend," Wade analyzed, while he bowed. He proposed himself as a lodger.

"I did n't know it was talked of generally," replied the widow, plaintively; "but I have said that we felt lonesome, Mr. Purtett bein' gone, and if the new minister—"

Here she paused. The cut of Wade's jib was unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwholesome black, like the same. His bronzed face was frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on Original Sin or Total Depravity.

"I am not the new minister," said Wade, smiling slightly over his moustache; "but a new Superintendent for the Foundry."

"Mr. Whiffler is goin'?" exclaimed Mrs. Purtett. She

looked at her daughter, who gave a little sob and ran out of the room.

"What makes my daughter Belle feel bad," says the widow, “is, that she had a friend, — well, it is n't too much to say that they was as good as engaged, and he was foreman of the Foundry finishin'-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt him, just as he spoils everything he touches; and last winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox that's his name, and his head is runnin' over with inventions took to spreein' and liquor, and got ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman to a hand, and is all the while lettin' down lower."

The widow's heart thus opened, Wade walked in as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to him. He was presently installed in the large and small front-rooms upstairs, unpacking his traps, and making himself permanently at home.

Superintendent Whiffler came over, by and by, to see his successor. He did not like his looks. The new man should have looked mean or weak or rascally, to suit the outgoer.

"How long do you expect to stay?" asks Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hanging a map and a print vis-à-vis.

"Until the men and I, or the Company and I, cannot pull together."

"I'll give you a week to quarrel with both, and another to see the whole concern go to everlasting smash. And now, if you're ready, I'll go over the accounts with you and prove it."

Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not mention this conviction.

CHAPTER III.

HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA!

Ar ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the safe-key to Wade, and departed to ruin some other property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade walked with him to the gate.

"I'm glad to be out of a sinking ship," said the ex-boss. "The works will go down, sure as shooting. And I think myself well out of the clutches of these men. They're a bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of my life with 'em."

"A bad lot, are they?" mused Wade, as he returned to the office. "I must give them a little sharp talk by way of

Inaugural."

He had the bell tapped and the men called together in the main building.

Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic way.

While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces, smoke rose from the dusty beds where Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, manacled with heavy chains, stood over the furnace-doors, ready to lift steaming jorums of melted metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to swallow.

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire. to ripen it. Here was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelahs of the Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civilization.

Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without

a wabble; a cross-head, cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the waves; a light walkingbeam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy folds of a dim atmosphere, half dust, half smoke. A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found this compound quite palpable and solid, and they moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side by side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its perpendicular.

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and good force wasting for want of a little will and skill to train the force and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy and chaos.

"All they want here is a head," he thought.

He shook his own. The brain within was well developed with healthy exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.

At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot" of men came together. They numbered more than two hundred, though the Foundry was working short. They had been notified that "that gonoph of a Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller was in, who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em and tell 'em whether he was a damn' fool or not."

So all hands collected from the different parts of the Foundry to see the head.

They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,- -a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere

overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers like lances.

Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Blackfeet in their war-paint. Their hairy chests showed, where some men parade elaborate shirt-bosoms. Some had their sleeves pushed up to the elbow to exhibit their compact flexors and extensors. Some had rolled their flannel up to the shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like the bibs of our childhood, — or about the waist, like the coquettish articles which young housewives affect. But there was no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment.

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake.

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra's two hundred crests of insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He read and ticketed each man, as he came up,-good, bad, or on the fence,- and marked each so that he would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the two hundred or the one would be master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss? An old question. It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He waited a moment until the men were still. He was a Saxon sixfooter of thirty. He stood easily on his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose clipper, — that the hands could see.