"If there are scalawags starting that 'state steal' howl again somebody ought to tell 'em that there are three machine-guns and plenty of loaded rifles on Capitol Hill to-night, and the men behind 'em propose to shoot to kill," stated Blanchard, vengefully, shaking his silk hat.
Morrison whirled on him. "You're just the man to go down there and tell 'em so! You probably have inside information. All I know is hearsay! I'll advise 'em and you threaten 'em. Come along, Blanchard! We'll make a good team!"
While Commander Lanigan talked with the mayor from a telephone-booth in a drug-store under Central Labor Union hall, Post-Adjutant Demeter stood with his nose pressed against the glass door, waiting anxiously.
Lanigan pushed open the door with one hand while he hung up the receiver with the other, and by his precipitate exit nigh bowled his adjutant over; Mr. Lanigan, it was plain to be seen, was wound up tightly that evening and his mainspring was operating him by jumps.
"He's the boy! He's coming! Tell the world so! And I'll go back up-stairs and tell them blistered sons o' seefo that there are such things as truth and a bar o' soap in this country, spite o' the fact they have never used either one!"
Demeter followed his commander into the street.
In spite of his haste, Lanigan was halted; he gazed up into the heavens, his breath streaming on the crackly-cold air.
The skies were blazing with shuttlings of lambent flame. From nadir to zenith the mystic light shivered and sheeted. Never had Lanigan beheld a more vivid display of the phenomenon of the aurora borealis. He seemed to be waiting for something. He sighed and shook his head.
"Peter, my heart jumped at first glimpse! 'Tis like the flash of the Argonne big guns! Thank God, the thunder of 'em isn't following!"
"Yes, thank God!" murmured Demeter, his soul in his tones!
They stood there for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder, the contact of arm with arm serving for an exchange of thoughts between those veterans in a silence that would have been profaned by words.
The phantasmagoria overhead was shifting infinitely and rapidly; there were flashes that seemed to presage a thunderous roar of an explosion and were more bodeful because the hush aloft in the heavenly spaces remained unbroken; then the filaments and streamers of light made one mighty oriflamme across the skies, an expanse of woven hues, wavering and lashing as if a great wind were threshing across the main fabric and flinging its attendant bannerets.