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The river was now at its lowest and at every point of sand and shingle, meagre bands of gold puddlers were at work washing for gold in cradle rockers. To judge, however, from the shabbiness of their surroundings there was little fear that their gains would disturb the equilibrium of the world's gold yield.
Caleb certainly justified this admiration, for he was a fine specimen of a Mershire puddler and there is no finer race of men to be found anywhere than the puddlers of Mershire. Elisabeth's eyes twinkled. "That is one of your anæmic and neurotic Christians," she remarked demurely.
"Ou, ay," returned the old Scotchman, "we gae doon an' doon till we come on what we ma ca' the primary rock, and under that there is nothin' except," with a touch of religious enthusiasm, "maybe 'tis the bottomless pit, where auld Hornie dwells, as we are tauld in the Screepture; noo let us gae up again, an' I'll show ye the puddlers at wark."
But among the jovial puddlers and brake-men that took the air there, it was well enough to have an escort so devoted and so muscular. So pretty a woman could scarcely have walked alone in Bluff Park without insulting approaches. Maud would hardly have nodded to Sleeny on Algonquin Avenue, for fear some millionaire might see it casually, and scorn them both.
They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and then through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels, "Come on," said Horrocks in Raut's ear; and they went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyères, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace.
In the long catalogue of the strikers of that year are found the ribbon weavers of Philadelphia, Paterson, and New York, the stablemen of New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco, the cotton yard workers of New Orleans, the cotton weavers of New England and New York, the stockyard employees of Chicago and Omaha, the potters of Green Point, Long Island, the puddlers of Johnstown and Columbia, Pennsylvania, the machinists of Buffalo, the tailors of New York, and the shoemakers of Indiana.
"You are sort of a dwarf, Blair," she said, with curiously impersonal brutality. Any enjoyment, she insisted, that was worthy of a man, was only a by-product, as you might call it, of effort for some other purpose than enjoyment. "One of our puddlers enjoys doing a good job, I guess; but that isn't why he does it," she said, shrewdly.
The man handed him his ticket without any reply, but turned to a friend beside him, and said, "Who is that cheeky brother that knows me so well?" "Oh! that's a rounder by the name of Offitt. He is a sort of Reformer makes speeches to the puddlers on the rights of man." "Seems rather fresh," said Jimmy. "A little brine wouldn't hurt him." Offitt strolled into the theatre, which was well filled.
The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in the city, spending a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South, a brother-in-law of Kirby's, Mitchell.
They crossed the creek and crept along in the shadow of the hill, for the moon, although low down in the sky, was still bright and dangerous to hunted outlaws. Off to the left could be heard the long-drawn respirations of the engines at the Silver Stream, and the grind of her puddlers, the splashing of the slurry, and the occasional solemn, significant clang of a knocker.
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