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Parker's crew turn out! All hands wanted at the lake!" In the excitement of the moment Mank did not question the command nor pause to reflect that he might be calling his neighbors into trouble that they would not relish. In a few moments the bell of the little chapel was sending its jangling alarm out over the village.
One cheerful moment for Parker had been when the postmaster informed him of Sunkhaze's equilibrium in the matter of news-monging But a more cheerful moment was when Mank, his foreman, standing with him on the ice above the submerged Swogon told him that a sandbar made out into the lake at that point and that the locomotive was probably lodged on the bar, only a little way below the surface.
You see what kind of a position that puts us in." "You don't mean that the crew is going to strike, or rather slip out from under, do you, Mank?" asked Parker, struck by the man's demeanor. "Well, I'd hardly like to say that. I ain't commissioned to put it that strong.
"But I'm in no position, Mank, to guarantee safety to the men who are working for the company," he cried. "It looks to me as tho I were standing here pretty nigh single-handed. If I understand your meaning, I can't depend on my crew to back me up if it comes to a clinch with the old bear?" "The boys here are not cowards," replied the foreman with some spirit.
At last, after their declared interviews for that purpose, these brethren have patched up a mank agreement, which they have published, in a paper entitled Abstract of the covenanted principles of the Church of Scotland, &c., with a prefixed advertisement in some copies, asserting the removal of their differences, which arose from a sermon on Psal. cxxii, 3, published at Glasgow, by a disapprobation of what is implied in some expressions hereof, viz., "That all the members of Christ's mystical body may, and ought to unite in visible church communion."
Parker," said the foreman earnestly, "have you go it figured what the old chap is goin' to do to us?" "That is hardly a fair question to put to me Mank," said the engineer, pulling on his mittens. "You knew him up this way better than I. Now you tell me what you expect him to do." But the foreman shook his head dubiously. "It'll never come at a man twice alike," he said.
But, Mank, I think that when the pinch comes you will find that my men can be as loyal to me, even if I am a stranger, as Ward's men are to the infernal old tyrant who has abused them all these years. I'm going to believe so at any rate." He turned away and started out of doors into the crisp morning. "I'm going to believe that last as long as I can," he muttered.
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