"That's so," said another girl, and another. Then there was a
fusilade of hand-claps started by the girls, and somewhat feebly
echoed by the men.

One or two men looked rather uneasily back towards Dennison and
Flynn and two more foremen who had come forward.

"It ain't as though we had something to fall back on," said a man's
grumbling voice. "It's easy to talk when you 'ain't got a wife and
five children dependent on you."

"That's so," said another man, doggedly.

"That has nothing to do with it," said Ellen, firmly. "We can all
club together, and keep the wolf from the door for those who are
hardest pressed for a while; and as for me, if I were a man--"

She paused a minute. When she spoke again her voice was full of
childlike enthusiasm; it seemed to ring like a song.

"If I were a man," said she, "I would go out in the street and
dig--I would beg, I would steal--before I would yield--I, a free man
in a free country--to tyranny like this!"

There was a great round of applause at that. Dennison scowled and
said something in a low voice to another foreman at his side. Flynn
laughed, with a perplexed, admiring look at Ellen.

"The question is," said Tom Peel, slouching on the outskirts of the
throng, and speaking in an imperturbable, compelling, drawling
voice, "whether the free men in the free country are going to kick
themselves free, or into tighter places, by kicking."

"If you have got to stop to count the cost of bravery and standing
up for your rights, there would be no bravery in the world,"
returned Ellen, with disdain.

"Oh, I am ready to kick," said Peel, with his mask-like smile.

"So am I," said Granville Joy, in a loud voice. Amos Lee came
rushing through the crowd to Ellen's side. He had been eating his
dinner in another room, and had just heard what was going on. He
opened his mouth with a motion as of letting loose a flood of
ranting, but somebody interposed. John Sargent, bulky and
irresistible in his steady resolution, put him aside and stood
before him.

"Look here," he said to them all. "There may be truth in what Miss
Brewster says, but we must not act hastily; there is too much at
stake. Let us appoint a committee and go to see Mr. Lloyd this
evening, and remonstrate on the cutting of the wages."  He turned to
Ellen in a kindly, half-paternal fashion. "Don't you see it would be
better?" he said.

She looked at him doubtfully, her cheeks glowing, her eyes like
stars. She was freedom and youth incarnate, and rebellious against
all which she conceived as wrong and tyrannical. She could hardly
admit, in her fire of enthusiasm, of pure indignation, of any
compromise or arbitration. All the griefs of her short life, she had
told herself, were directly traceable to the wrongs of the system of
labor and capital, and were awakening within her as freshly as if
they had just happened.

She remembered her father, exiled in his prime from his place in the
working world by this system of arbitrary employment; she remembered
her aunt in the asylum; poor little Amabel; her own mother toiling
beyond her strength on underpaid work; Maria coughing her life away.
She remembered her own life twisted into another track from the one
which she should have followed, and there was for the time very
little reason or justice in her. That injustice which will arise to
meet its kind in equal combat had arisen in her heart. Still, she
yielded. "Perhaps you are right," she said to Sargent. She had
always liked John Sargent, and she respected him.

"I am sure it is the best course," he said to her, still in that
low, confidential voice.

It ended in a committee of four--John Sargent, Amos Lee, Tom Peel,
and one of the older lasters, a very respectable man, a deacon in
the Baptist Church--being appointed to wait on Robert Lloyd that
evening.

When the one-o'clock whistle blew, Ellen went back to her machine.
She was very pale, but she was conscious of a curious steadiness of
all her nerves. Abby leaned towards her, and spoke low in the roar
of wheels.

"I'll back you up, if I die for it," she said.

But Sadie Peel, on the other side, spoke quite openly, with a laugh
and shrug of her shoulders. "Land," she said, "father'll be with
you. He's bound to strike. He struck when he was in McGuire's. Catch
father givin' up anything. But as for me, I wish you'd all slow up
an' stick to work, if you do get a little less. If we quit work I
can't have a nearseal cape, and I've set my heart on a nearseal cape
this winter."

Chapter LII

Ellen resolved that she would say as little as possible about the
trouble at home that night. She did not wish her parents to worry
over it until it was settled in one way or another.

When her mother asked what they had done about the wage-cutting, she
replied that a committee had been appointed to wait on Mr. Lloyd
that evening, and talk it over with him; then she said nothing more.

"He won't give in if he's like his uncle," said Fanny.

Ellen went on eating her supper in silence. Her father glanced at
her with sharp solicitude.

"Maybe he will," said he.

"No, he won't," returned Fanny.

Ellen was very pale and her eyes were bright. After supper she went
to the window and pressed her face against the glass, shielding her
eyes from the in-door light, and saw that the storm had quite
ceased. The stars were shining and the white boughs of the trees
lashing about in the northwest wind. She went into the entry, where
she had hung her hat and coat, and began putting them on.

"Where are you going, Ellen?" asked her mother.

"Just down to Abby's a minute."

"You don't mean to say your are goin' out again in this snow, Ellen
Brewster? I should think you were crazy."  When Fanny said crazy,
she suddenly started and shuddered as if she had struck herself. She
thought of Eva. Always the possibility of a like doom was in her own
mind.

"It has stopped snowing, mother," Ellen said.

"Stopped snowing! What if it has? The roads ain't cleared. You can't
get down to Abby Atkins's without gettin' wet up to your knees. I
should think if you got into the house after such a storm you'd have
sense enough to stay in. I've worried just about enough."

Ellen took off her coat and hat and hung them up again. "Well, I
won't go if you feel so, mother," she said, patiently.

"It seems as if you might get along without seein' Abby Atkins till
to-morrow mornin', when you'd seen her only an hour ago," Fanny went
on, in the high, nagging tone which she often adopted with those
whom she loved the dearest.

"Yes, I can," said Ellen. It seemed to her that she must see
somebody with whom she could talk about the trouble in the factory,
but she yielded. There was always with the girl a perfect surface
docility, as that she seemed to have no resistance, but a little way
down was a rock-bed of firmness. She lighted her lamp, and took her
library book and went up-stairs to bed to read. But she could not
read, and she could not sleep when she had put aside her book and
extinguished her lamp. She could think of nothing except Robert, and
what he would say to the committee. She lay awake all night thinking
of it. Ellen was a girl who was capable of the most devoted love,
and the most intense dissent and indignation towards the same
person. She could love in spite of faults, and she could see faults
in spite of love. She thought of Robert Lloyd as of the one human
soul whom she loved best out of the whole world, whom she put before
everybody else, even her own self, and she also thought of him with
a wrath which was pitiless and uncompromising, and which seemed to
tear her own heart to pieces, for one cannot be wroth with love
without a set-back of torture. "If he does not give in and raise the
wages, I shall hate him," thought Ellen; and her heart stung her as
if at the touch of a hot iron, and then she could have struck
herself for the supposition that he would not give in. "He must,"
she told herself, with a great fervor of love. "He must."

But when she went down to breakfast the next morning her mother
stared at her sharply.

"Ellen Brewster, what is the matter with you?" she cried.

"Nothing. Why?"

"Nothing! You look like a ghost."

"I feel perfectly well," said Ellen. She made an effort to eat as
much breakfast as usual in order that her mother should not suspect
that she was troubled. When at last she set out for the factory, in
the early morning dusk, she was chilled and trembling with
excitement.

The storm had quite ceased, and there was a pale rose-and-violet
dawn-light in the east, and presently came effects like
golden-feathered shafts shooting over the sky. The road was alive
with shovelling men, construction-cars of the railroad company were
laboring back and forth to clear the tracks, householders were
making their way from their doors to their gates, clearing their
paths, lifting up the snow in great, glittering, blue-white blocks
on their clumsy shovels. Everywhere were the factory employés
hastening to their labor; the snow was dropping from the overladen
tree branches in great blobs; there was an incessant, shrill chatter
of people, and occasional shouts. It was the rally of mankind after
a defeat by a primitive force of nature. It was the eternal
reassertion of human life and a higher organization over the
elemental. Men who had walked doggedly the morning before now moved
with a spring of alacrity, although the road was very heavy. There
was a new light in their eyes; their cheeks glowed. Ellen had no
doubt whatever that if Robert Lloyd had not yielded the attitude of
the employés of Lloyd's would be one of resistance. She herself
seemed to breathe in resistance to tyranny, and strength for the
right in every breath of the clear, crisp morning air. She felt as
if she could trample on herself and her own weakness, for the sake
of justice and the inalienable good of her kind, with as little
hesitation as she trampled on the creaking snow. Yet she trembled
with that deadly chill before a sense of impending fate. When she
returned the salutations of her friends on the road she felt that
her lips were stiff.

"You look dreadful queer, Ellen," Abby Atkins said, anxiously, when
she joined her. Maria also was out that morning.

"Have you heard what they are going to do?" Ellen asked, in a sort
of breathless fashion.

"You mean about the wage-cutting? Don't look so, Ellen."

Maria pressed close to Ellen, and slid her thin arm through hers.

"Yes," said Ellen. "What did John Sargent say when he got home last
night?"

Abby hesitated a second, looking doubtfully at Ellen. "I don't see
that there is any need for you to take all this so much to heart,"
she said.

"What did he say?"

"Well," Abby replied, reluctantly, "I believe Mr. Lloyd wouldn't
give in. Ellen Brewster, for Heaven's sake, don't look so!"

Ellen walked on, her head high, her face as white as death. Maria
clung closely to her, her own lips quivering.

"What are the men going to do, do you think?" asked Ellen,
presently, in a low voice.

"I don't know," replied Abby. "John Sargent seems to think they'll
give in. He says he doesn't know what else they can do. The times
are hard. I believe Amos Lee and Tom Peel are for striking, but he
says he doesn't believe the men will support them. The amount of it
all is, a man with money has got it all his own way. It's like
fighting with bare hands to oppose him, and getting yourself cut,
and not hurting him at all. He's got all the weapons. We simply
can't go without work all winter. It is better to do with less than
with nothing at all. What can a man like Willy Jones do if he hasn't
any work? He and his mother would actually suffer. What could we
do?"

"I don't think we ought to think so much about that," said Ellen.

"What do you think we ought to think about, for goodness' sake?"

"Whether we are doing right or not, whether we are furthering the
cause of justice and humanity, or hindering it. Whether it is for
good in the long run or not. There have always been martyrs; I don't
see why it is any harder for us to be martyrs than for those we read
about."

Sadie Peel came pressing up behind eagerly, her cheeks glowing,
holding up her dress, and displaying a cheap red petticoat. "Ellen
Brewster," she exclaimed, "if you dare say anything more to-day I'm
goin' to talk. Father is tearing, though he goes around looking as
if he wouldn't jump at a cannon-ball. Do, for Heaven's sake, keep
still; and if you can't get what you want, take what you can get. I
ain't goin' to be cheated out of my nearseal cape, nohow."

"Sadie Peel, you make me tired," cried Abby Atkins. "I don't say
that I'm striking, but I'd strike for all a nearseal cape. I'm
ashamed of you."

"I don't care if you be," said the girl, tossing her head. "A
nearseal cape means as much to me as some other things to you. I
want Ellen Brewster to hold her tongue."

"Ellen Brewster will hold her tongue or not, just as she has a mind
to," responded Abby, with a snap. She did not like Sadie Peel.

"Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble."

"I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that," declared
Abby.

Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little
Maria clinging closely to her. Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh
and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she
heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.

"They don't mean to strike," she told herself. "They mean to
submit."

All went to their tasks as usual. In a minute after the whistle blew
the great pile was in the full hum of labor. Ellen stood for a few
moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her
way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench
cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice. She
pressed close to him, while the men around stared.

"What is going to be done?" she asked, in a low voice.

Sargent turned and looked at her in a troubled fashion, and spoke in
a pacific, soothing tone, as her father might have done. He was much
older than Ellen.

"Now look here, child," he said, "I don't dare take the
responsibility of urging all these men into starvation this kind of
weather. The times are hard. Lloyd has some reason--"

Ellen walked away from him swiftly and went to the row of
lasting-machines where Amos Lee and Tom Peel stood. She walked up to
them and spoke in a loud, clear voice.

"You are not going to give in?" said she. "You don't mean to give
in?"

Lee turned and gave her one stare, and left his machine.

"Not another stitch of work will I do under this new wage-list, so
help me, God!" he proclaimed.

Tom Peel stood for a second like an automaton, staring at them both.
Then he turned back to his post.

"I'm with ye," he said.

The lasters, for some occult reason, were always the most turbulent
element in Lloyd's. In less than three minutes the enthusiasm of
revolt had spread, and every laster had left his machine. In a
half-hour more there was an exodus of workmen from Lloyd's. There
were very few left in the factory. Among them were John Sargent, the
laster who was a deacon and had formed one of the consulting
committee, Sadie Peel, who wanted her nearseal cape, and Mamie
Brady, who would do nothing which she thought would displease the
foreman, Flynn.

"If father's mind to be such a fool, it's no reason why I should,"
said Sadie Peel, stitching determinedly away. Mamie Brady looked at
Flynn, when he came up to her, with a gentle, wheedling smile. There
was no one near, and she fancied that he might steal a kiss. But
instead he looked at her, frowning.

"No use you tying away any longer, Mamie," he said. "The strike's
on."

Chapter LIII

That was one of the strangest days which Ellen had ever passed. The
enforced idleness gave her an indefinite sense of guilt. She tried
to assist her mother about the household tasks, then she tried to
sew on the wrappers, but she was awkward about it, from long disuse.

"Do take your book and sit down and read and rest a little, now
you've got a chance," said Fanny, with sharp solicitude.

She said never one word concerning it to Ellen, but all the time she
thought how Ellen had probably lost her lover. It was really
doubtful which suffered the more that day, the mother or the
daughter. Fanny, entirely faithful to her own husband, had yet that
strange vicarious affection for her daughter's lover, and a
realization of her state of mind, of which a mother alone is
capable. It is like a cord of birth which is never severed. Not one
shadow of sad reflection passed over the bright enthusiastic face of
the girl but was passed on, as if driven by some wind of spirit,
over the face of the older woman. She reflected Ellen entirely.

As for Andrew, his anxiety was as tender, and less subtle. He did
not understand so clearly, but he suffered more. He was clumsy with
this mystery of womanhood, but he was unremitting in his efforts to
do something for the girl. Once he tiptoed up to Fanny and
whispered, when Ellen was in the next room, that he hoped she hadn't
made any mistake, that it seemed to him she looked pretty pale.

"Mistake?" cried Fanny, tossing her head, and staring at him
proudly. "Haven't you got any spirit, and you a man, Andrew
Brewster?"

"I ain't thinking about myself," said Andrew.

And he was quite right. Andrew, left to himself and his purely
selfish interests, could have struck with the foremost. He would
never have considered himself when it came to a question of a
conscientious struggle against injustice, though he was so prone to
look upon both sides of an argument that his decision would have
been necessarily slow; but here was Ellen to consider, and she was
more than himself. While he had been, in the depths of his heart,
fiercely jealous of Robert Lloyd, yet the suspicion that his girl
might suffer because of her renunciation of him hurt him to the
quick. Ellen had told him all she had done in the interests of the
strike, and he had no doubt that her action would effectually put an
end to all possible relations between the two. He tried to imagine
how a girl would feel, and being a man, and measuring all passion by
the strength of his own, he exaggerated her suffering. He could eat
nothing, and looked haggard. He remained out-of-doors the greater
part of the day. After he had cleared his own paths, he secured a
job clearing some for a more prosperous neighbor. Andrew in those
days grasped eagerly at any little job which could bring him in a
few pennies. He worked until dark, and when he went home he saw with
a great throb of excitement the Lloyd sleigh waiting before his
door.

Robert had heard from Dennison of Ellen's attitude about the strike.
He had been incredulous at first, as indeed he had been incredulous
about the strike. He had looked out of the office window with the
gaze of one who does not believe what he sees when he had heard that
retreating tramp of the workmen on the stairs.

"What does all this mean?" he said to Dennison, who entered, pale to
his lips.

"It means a strike," replied Dennison. Nellie Stone rolled her
pretty eyes around at the two men from under her fluff of blond
hair. Flynn came in and stood in a curious, non-committal attitude.

"A strike!" repeated Robert, vaguely. "What for?"

It seemed incredible that he should ask, but he did. The calm
masterfulness of his uncle, which could not even imagine opposition,
had apparently descended upon him.

Both foremen stared at him. Nellie Stone smiled a little covertly.

"Why, you know you had a committee wait upon you last night, Mr.
Lloyd," replied Dennison.

Flynn looked out of the window at the retreating throngs of workmen,
and gave a whistle under his breath.

"Have they struck because of the wage-cutting?" asked Robert, in a
curious, boyish, incredulous, aggrieved tone. Then all at once he
colored violently. "Let them strike, then!" he cried. He threw
himself into a chair and took up the morning paper, with its glaring
headlines about the unprecedented storm, as if nothing had happened.
Nellie Stone, after a sly wink at Flynn, which he did not return,
began writing again. Flynn went out, and Dennison remained
standing in a rather helpless attitude. A strike in Lloyd's was
unprecedented, but this manner of receiving the news was more
unprecedented still. The proprietor was apparently reading the
morning paper with much interest, when two more foremen, heads of
other departments, came hurrying in.

"I have heard already," said Robert, in response to their gasped
information. Then he turned another page of the paper.

"What's to be done, sir?" said one of the new-comers, after a
prolonged stare at his companion and Dennison. He was a spare man,
with a fierce glimmer of blue eyes under bent brows.

"Let them strike if they want to," replied Robert.

It was in his mind to explain at length to these men his reasons for
cutting the wages--for his own attitude as he knew it himself was
entirely reasonable--but the pride of a proud family was up in him.

"The strike would never have been on, for the men went to work
quietly enough, if it hadn't been for that Brewster girl," Dennison
said, presently, but rather doubtfully. He was not quite sure how
the information would be received.

Robert dropped his paper, and stared at him with angry incredulity.

"What are you talking about?" he said. "What had Miss Brewster to do
with it?"

He said "Miss Brewster" with a meaning emphasis of respect, and
Dennison was quick to adopt the hint.

"Oh, nothing," he replied, uneasily, "only she talked with them."

"You mean that Miss Brewster talked to the men?"

"Yes; she said a good deal yesterday, and to-day the men would not
have struck if it had not been for her. It only needs a spark to set
them off sometimes."

Robert was very pale. "Well," he said, coolly, "there is no need for
you to remain longer, since the factory is shut down. You may as
well go."

"The engineer is seeing to the fires, Mr. Lloyd," said Dennison.

"Very well."  Robert turned to the girl at the desk. "The factory is
closed, Miss Stone," he said; "there is no need for you to remain
longer to-day. Come to-morrow at ten o'clock, and I will have
something for you to do with regard to settling up accounts. There
is nothing in shape now."

That afternoon Robert went to see Ellen. He could not wait until
evening.

Fanny greeted him at the door, and there was the inevitable flurry
about lighting the parlor stove, and presently Ellen entered.

She had changed the gown which she had worn at her factory-work for
her last winter's best one. Her young face was pale, almost severe,
and she met him in a way which made her seem a stranger.

Robert realized suddenly that she had, as it were, closed the door
upon all their old relations. She seemed years older, and at the
same time indefinably younger, since she was letting the childish
impulses, which are at the heart of all of us untouched by time and
experience, rise rampant and unchecked. She was following the lead
of her own convictions with the terrible unswerving of a child, even
in the face of her own hurt. She was, metaphorically, bumping her
own head against the floor in her vain struggles for mastery over
the mighty conditions of her life.

She bowed to Robert, and did not seem to see his proffered hand.

"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked, almost humbly, although
his own wrath was beginning to rise.

"No, I would rather not," she replied, with a straight look at him.
Her blue eyes did not falter in the least.

"May I sit down?" he said. "I have something I would like to say to
you."

"Certainly, if you wish," she replied. Then she seated herself on
the sofa, with Robert opposite in the crushed-plush easy-chair.

The room was still very cold, and the breath could be seen at the
lips of each in white clouds. Robert had on his coat, but Ellen had
nothing over her blue gown. It was on Robert's tongue to ask if she
were not cold, then he refrained. The issues at stake seemed to make
the question frivolous to offensiveness. He felt that any approach
to tenderness when Ellen was in her present mood would invoke an
indignation for which he could scarcely blame her, that he must try
to meet her on equal fighting-ground.

Ellen sat before him, her little, cold hands tightly folded in her
lap, her mouth set hard, her steady fire of blue eyes on his face,
waiting for him to speak.

Robert felt a decided awkwardness about beginning to talk. Suddenly
it occurred to him to wonder what there was to say. It amounted to
this: they were in their two different positions, their two points
of view--would either leave for any argument of the other? Then he
wondered if he could, in the face of a girl who wore an expression
like that, stoop to make an argument, for the utter blindness and
deafness of her very soul to any explanation of his position was too
evident in her face.

"I called to tell you, if you will permit me, how much I regret the
unfortunate state of affairs at the factory," Robert said, and the
girl's eyes met his as with a flash of flame.

"Why did you not prevent it, then?" asked she. Ellen had all the
fire of her family, but a steadiness of manner which never deserted
her. She was never violent.

"I could not prevent it," replied Robert, in a low voice.

Ellen said nothing.

"You mistake my position," said Robert. It was in his mind then to
lay the matter fully before her, as he had disdained to do before
the committee, but her next words deterred him.

"I understand your position very fully," said she.

Robert bowed.

"There is only one way of looking at it," said Ellen, in her
inexpressibly sweet, almost fanatical voice. She tossed her head,
and the fluff of fair hair over her temples caught a beam of
afternoon sunlight.

"She is only a child," thought Robert, looking at her. He rose and
crossed over to the sofa, and sat down beside her with a masterful
impatience. "Look here, Ellen," he said, leaving all general issues
for their own personal ones, "you are not going to let this come
between us?"

Ellen sat stiff and straight, and made no reply.

"All this can make very little difference to you," Robert urged.
"You know how I feel. That is, it can make very little difference to
you if you still feel as you did. You must know that I have only
been waiting--that I am eager and impatient to lift you out of it
all."

Ellen faced him. "Do you think I would be lifted out of it now?" she
said.

"Why, but, Ellen, you cannot--"

"Yes, I can. You do not know me."

"Ellen, you are under a total misapprehension of my position."

"No, I am not. I apprehend it perfectly."

"Ellen, you cannot let this separate us."

Ellen looked straight ahead in silence.

"You at least owe it to me to tell me if, irrespective of this, your
feelings have changed," Robert said, in a low voice.

Ellen said nothing.

"You may have come to prefer some one else," said Robert.

"I prefer no one before my own, before all these poor people who are
a part of my life," Ellen cried out, suddenly, her face flaming.

"Then why do you refuse to let me act for their final good? You must
know what it means to have them thrown out of work in midwinter. You
know the factory will remain closed for the present on account of
the strike."

"I did not doubt it," said Ellen, in a hard voice. All the bitter
thoughts to which she would not give utterance were in her voice.

"I cannot continue to run the factory at the present rate and meet
expenses," said Robert; "in fact, I have been steadily losing for
the last month."  He had, after all, descended to explanation. "It
amounts to my either reducing the wage-list or closing the factory
altogether," he continued. "For my own good I ought to close the
factory altogether, but I thought I would give the men a chance."

Robert thought by saying that he must have finally settled matters.
It did not enter his head that she would really think it advisable
for him to continue losing money. The pure childishness of her
attitude was something really beyond the comprehension of a man of
business who had come into hard business theories along with his
uncle's dollars.

"What if you do lose money?" said Ellen.

Robert stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" said he.

"What if you do lose money?"

"A man cannot conduct business on such principles," replied Robert.
"There would soon be no business to conduct. You don't understand."

"Yes, I do understand fully," replied Ellen.

Robert looked at her, at the clear, rosy curve of her young cheek,
the toss of yellow hair above a forehead as candid as a baby's, at
her little, delicate figure, and all at once such a rage of
masculine insistence over all this obstinacy of reasoning was upon
him that it was all he could do to keep himself from seizing her in
his arms and forcing her to a view of his own horizon. He felt
himself drawn up in opposition to an opponent at once too delicate,
too unreasoning, and too beloved to encounter. It seemed as if the
absurdity of it would drive him mad, and yet he was held to it. He
tried to give a desperate wrench aside from the main point of the
situation. He leaned over Ellen, so closely that his lips touched
her hair.

"Ellen, let us leave all this," he pleaded; "let me talk to you. I
had to wait a little while. I knew you would understand that, but
let me talk to you now."

Ellen sat as rigid as marble. "I wish to talk of nothing besides the
matter at hand, Mr. Lloyd," said she. "That is too close to my heart
for any personal consideration to come between."

Chapter LIV

When Robert went home in the winter twilight he was more miserable
than he had ever been in his life. He felt as if he had been
assaulting a beautiful alabaster wall of unreason. He felt as if
that which he could shatter at a blow had yet held him in defiance.
The idea of this girl, of whom he had thought as his future wife,
deliberately setting herself against him, galled him inexpressibly,
and in spite of himself he could not quite free his mind of
jealousy. On his way home he stopped at Lyman Risley's office, and
found, to his great satisfaction, that he was alone, writing at his
desk. Even his stenographer had gone home. He turned around when
Robert entered, and looked at him with his quizzical, yet kindly,
smile.

"Well, how are you, boy?" he said.

Robert dropped into the first chair, and sat therein, haunched up as
in a lapse of despair and weariness.

"What is the matter?" asked Risley.

"You have heard about the trouble in the factory?"

For answer Risley held up a night's paper with glaring head-lines.

"Yes, of course it is in the papers," assented Robert, wearily.

Risley stared at him in a lazily puzzled fashion. "Well," he said,
"what is it all about? Why are you so broken up about it?"  Risley
laid considerable emphasis on the _you_.

"Yes," cried Robert, in a sudden stress of indignation. "You look at
it like all the rest. Why are all the laborers to be petted and
coddled, and the capitalists held up to execration? Good Lord, isn't
there any pity for the rich man without his drop of water, in the
Bible or out? Are all creation born with blinders on, and can they
only see before their noses?"

"What are you talking about, Robert?" said Risley, laughing a
little.

"I say why should all the sympathy go to the workmen who are acting
like the pig-headed idiots they are, and none for the head of the
factory, who has the sharp-edged, red-hot brunt of it all to bear?"

"You wouldn't look at it that way if you were one of the poor men
just out on strike such weather as this," said Risley, dryly. He
glanced as he spoke at the window, which was beginning to be thickly
furred with frost in spite of the heat of the office. Robert
followed his gaze, and noted the spreading fairy jungle of
crystalline trees and flowers on the broad field of glass.

"Do you think that is the worst thing in the world to bear?" he
demanded, angrily.

"What? Cold and hunger not only for yourself, but for those you
love?"

"Yes."

"Well, I think it is pretty bad," replied Risley.

"Well, suppose you had to bear that, at least for those you loved,
and--and--" said the young man, lamely.

Risley remained silent, waiting.

"If I had been my uncle instead of myself I should simply have shut
down with no ado," said Robert, presently, in an angry,
argumentative voice.

"I suppose you would; and as it was?"

"As it was, I thought I would give them a chance. Good God, Risley,
I have been running the factory at a loss for a month as it is. With
this new wage-list I should no more than make expenses, if I did
that. What was it to me? I did it to keep them in some sort of work.
As for myself, I would much rather have shut down and done with it,
but I tried to keep it running on their account, poor devils, and
now I am execrated for it, and they have deliberately refused what
little I could offer."

"Did you explain all this to the committee?" asked Risley.

"Explain? No! I told them my course was founded upon strict business
principles, and was as much for their good as for mine. They
understood. They know how hard the times are. Why, it was only last
week that Weeks & McLaughlin failed, and that meant a heavy loss. I
didn't explain."  Then Robert hesitated and colored. "I have just
explained to her," he said, with a curious hang of his head, like a
boy, "and if my explanation was met in the same fashion by the
others in the factory I might as well have addressed the north wind.
They are all alike; they are a different race. We cannot help them,
and they cannot help themselves, because they are themselves."

"You mean by her, Ellen Brewster?" Risley said.

Robert nodded gloomily.

"That is all in the paper," said Risley--"what she said to the men."

Robert made an impatient move.

"If ever there was a purely normal outgrowth, a perfect flower of
her birth and environments and training, that girl is one," said
Risley, with an accent of admiration.

"She is infected with the ranting idiocy of those with whom she has
been brought in daily contact," said Robert; but even as he spoke he
seemed to see the girl's dear young face, and his voice faltered.

"Even as you may be infected with the conservatism of those with
whom you are brought in contact," said Risley, dryly.

"What a democrat you are, Risley!" said Robert, impatiently. "I
believe you would make a good walking delegate."

Risley laughed. "I think I would myself," he said. "Wouldn't she
listen to you, Robert?"

"She listened with such utter dissent that she might as well have
been dumb. It is all over between us, Risley."

"How precipitate you are, you young folks!" said the other,
good-humoredly.

"How precipitate? Do you mean to say--?"

"I mean that you are forever thinking you are on the brink of
nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to
reach in your mortal life."

"Not in this case," said Robert.

"You know nothing about it. But if you will excuse me, it seems to
me that the matter of all these people being reduced to starvation
in a howling winter is of more importance than the coming together
of two people in the bonds of wedlock. It is the aggregate against
the individual."

"I don't deny that," said Robert, doggedly, "but I am not
responsible for the starvation, and the aggregate have brought it on
themselves."

"You have shut down finally?"

"Yes, I have. I would rather shut down than not, as far as I am
concerned. It is distinctly for my interest. The only one objection
is losing experienced workmen, but in a community like this, and in
times like this, that objection is reduced to a minimum. I can hire
all I want in the spring if I wish to open again. I should run a
risk of losing on every order I should have to fill in the next
three months, even with the reduced list. I would rather shut down
than not; I only reduced the wages for them."

Robert rose as he spoke. He felt in his heart that he had gotten
scant sympathy and comfort. The older man looked with pity at the
young fellow's handsome, gloomy face.

"There's one thing to remember," he said.

"What?"

"All the troubles of this world are born with wings."  Risley
laughed, as he spoke, in his half-cynical fashion.

As Robert walked home--for there was no car due--he felt completely
desolate. It seemed to him that everybody was in league against him.
When he reached his uncle's splendid house and entered, he felt such
an isolation from his kind in the midst of his wealth that something
like an actual terror of solitude came over him.

The impecunious cousin of his aunt's who had come to her during her
last illness acted as his housekeeper. There was something
inexpressibly irritating about this woman, who had suffered so much,
and was now nestling, with a sense of triumph over the passing of
her griefs, in a luxurious home.

She asked Robert if it were true that the factory was closed, and he
felt that she noted his gloomy face, and realized a greater extent
of comfort from her own exemption from such questions.

"Business must be a great care," said she, and a look of utter
peaceful reflection upon her own lot overspread her face.

After supper Robert went down to his aunt Cynthia's. He had not been
there for a long time. The minute he entered she started up with an
eagerness which had been completely foreign to her of late years.

"What is the matter, Robert?" she asked, softly. She took both his
hands as she spoke, and her look in his face was full of delicate
caressing.

Robert succumbed at once to this feminine solicitude, of which he
had had lately so little. He felt as if he had relapsed into
childhood. A sense of injury which was exquisite, as it brought
along with it a sense of his demand upon love and sympathy, seized
him.

"I am worried beyond endurance, Aunt Cynthia," said he.

"About the strike? I have read the night papers."

"Yes; I tried to do what was right, even at a sacrifice to myself,
and--"

Cynthia had read about Ellen, but she was a woman, and she said
nothing as to that.

"I tried to do what was right," Robert said, fairly broken down
again.

Cynthia had seated herself, and Robert had taken a low foot-stool at
her side. It came over him as he did so that it had been a favorite
seat of his when a child. As for Cynthia, influenced by the
appealing to the vulnerable place of her nature, she put her slim
hands on her nephew's head, and actually seemed to feel his baby
curls.

"Poor boy," she whispered.

Robert put both his arms around her and hid his face on her
shoulder, for love is a comforter, in whatever guise.

Chapter LV

On the day after the strike Ellen went to McGuire's and to Briggs's,
the two other factories in Rowe, to see if she could obtain a
position; but she was not successful. McGuire had discharged some of
his employés, reducing his force to its smallest possible limits,
since he had fewer orders, and was trying in that way to avert the
necessity of a cut in wages, and a strike or shut-down. McGuire's
was essentially a union factory, as was Briggs's. Ellen would have
found in either case difficulty about obtaining employment, because
she did not belong to the union, if for no other reason. At Briggs's
she encountered the proprietor himself in the office, and he
dismissed her with a bluff, almost brutal, peremptoriness which hurt
her cruelly, although she held up her head high as she left. Briggs
turned to a foreman who was standing by before she was well out of
hearing.

"I like that!" he said. "Mrs. Briggs read about that girl in the
paper last night, and the strike wouldn't have been on at Lloyd's if
it hadn't been for her. I would as soon take a lighted match into a
powder-magazine."

The foreman grinned. "She's a pretty, mild-looking thing," he said;
"doesn't look as if she could say boo to a goose."

"That's all you can tell," returned Briggs. "Deliver me from a
light-complexioned woman. They're all the very devil. Mrs. Briggs
says it's the same girl that read that composition that made such a
stir at the high-school exhibition. She'd make more trouble in a
factory than a dozen ordinary girls, and just now, when everything
is darned ticklish-looking."

"That's so," assented the foreman, "and all the more because she's
good-looking."

"I don't know what you call good-looking," returned Briggs.

He had two daughters, built upon the same heavy lines as himself and
wife, and he adored them. Insensibly he regarded all more delicate
feminine beauty as a disparagement of theirs. As Briggs spoke, the
foreman seemed to see in the air before his eyes the faces of the
two Briggs girls, large and massive, and dull of hue, the feminine
counterpart of their father's.

"Well, maybe you're right," said he, evasively. "I suppose some
might call her good-looking."

As he spoke he glanced out of the window at Ellen's retreating
figure, moving away over the snow-path with an almost dancing motion
of youth and courage, though she was sorely hurt. The girl had
scarcely ever had a hard word said to her in her whole life, for she
had been in her humble place a petted darling. She had plenty of
courage to bear the hard words now, but they cut deeply into her
unseasoned heart.

Ellen went on past the factories to the main street of Rowe. She had
no idea of giving up her efforts to obtain employment. She said to
herself that she must have work. She thought of the stores, that
possibly she might obtain a chance to serve as a sales-girl in one
of them. She actually began at the end of the long street, and
worked her way through it, with her useless inquiries, facing
proprietors and superintendents, but with no success. There was not
a vacancy in more than one or two, and there they wished only
experienced hands. She found out that her factory record told
against her. The moment she admitted that she had worked in a
factory the cold shoulder was turned. The position of a shop-girl
was so far below that of a sales-lady that the effect upon the
superintendent was almost as if he had met an unworthy aspirant to a
throne. He would smile insultingly and incredulously, even as he
regarded her.

"You would find that our goods are too fine to handle after leather.
Have you tried all the shops?"

At last Ellen gave that up, and started homeward. She paused once as
she came opposite an intelligence office. There was one course yet
open to her, but from that she shrank, not on her own account, but
she dared not--knowing what would be the sufferings of her relatives
should she do so--apply for a position as a servant.

As for herself, strained as she was to her height of youthful
enthusiasm for a great cause, as she judged it to be, clamping her
feet to the topmost round of her ladder of difficulty, she would
have essayed any honest labor with no hesitation whatever. But she
thought of her father and mother and grandmother, and went on past
the intelligence office.

When she came to her old school-teacher's--Miss Mitchell's--house,
she paused and hesitated a moment, then she went up the little path
between the snow-banks to the front door, and rang the bell. The
door was opened before the echoes had died away. Miss Mitchell had
seen her coming, and hastened to open it. Miss Mitchell had not been
teaching school for some years, having retired on a small competency
of her savings. Her mortgage was paid, and there was enough for
herself and her mother to live upon, with infinite care as to
details of expenditure. Every postage-stamp and car-fare had its
important part in the school-teacher's system of economy; but she
was quite happy, and her large face wore an expression of perfect
peace and placidity.

She was a woman who was not tortured by any strong, ungratified
desires. Her allotment of the gifts of the gods quite satisfied her.

When Ellen entered the rather stuffy sitting-room--for Miss Mitchell
and her mother were jealous of any breath of cold air after the
scanty fire was kindled--it was like entering into a stratum of
peace. It seemed quite removed from the turmoil of her own life. The
school-teacher's old mother sat in her rocker close to the stove,
stouter than ever, filling up her chair with those wandering curves
and vague outlines which only the over-fleshy human form can assume.
She looked as indefinite as a quivering jelly until one reached her
face. That wore a fixedness of amiability which accentuated the
whole like a high light. She had not seen Ellen for a long time, and
she greeted her with delight.

"Bless your heart!" said she, in her sweet, throaty, husky voice.
"Go and get her some of them cookies, Fanny, do."  The old woman's
faculties were not in the least impaired, although she was very old,
neither had her hands lost their cunning, for she still retained her
skill in cookery, and prepared the simple meals for herself and
daughter, seated in a high chair at the kitchen table to roll out
pastry or the famous little cookies which Ellen remembered along
with her childhood.

There was something about these cookies which Miss Mitchell
presently brought to her in a pretty china plate, with a little,
fine-fringed napkin, which was like a morsel of solace to the girl.
With the first sweet crumble of the cake on her plate, she wished to
cry. Sometimes the rush of old, kindly, tender associations will
overcome one who is quite equal to the strain of present emergency.
But she did not cry; she ate her cookies, and confided to Miss
Mitchell and her mother her desire to obtain a position elsewhere,
since her factory-work had failed her. It had occurred to her that
possibly Miss Mitchell, who was on the school-board, might know of a
vacancy in a primary school for the coming spring term, and that she
might obtain it.

"I think I know enough to teach a primary school," Ellen said.

"Of course you do, bless your heart," said old Mrs. Mitchell. "She
knows enough to teach any kind of a school, don't she, Fanny? You
get her a school, dear, right away."

But Miss Mitchell knew of no probable vacancy, since one young woman
who had expected to be married had postponed her marriage on account
of the strike in Lloyd's, and the consequent throwing out of
employment of her sweetheart. Then, also, Miss Mitchell owned with
hesitation, in response to Ellen's insistent question, that she
supposed that the fact that she had worked in a shop might in any
case interfere with her obtaining a position in a school.

"There is no sense in it, dear child, I know," she said, "but it
might be so."

"Yes, I supposed so," replied Ellen, bitterly. "They would all say
that a shop-girl had no right to try to teach school. Well, I'm much
obliged to you, Miss Mitchell."

"What are you going to do?" Miss Mitchell asked, anxiously,
following her to the door.

"I'm going to Mrs. Doty, to get some of the wrappers that mother
works on, until something else turns up," replied Ellen.

"It seems a pity."

Ellen smiled bravely. "Beggars mustn't be choosers," she said. "If
we can only keep along, somehow, I don't care."

There came a vehement pound of a stick on the floor, for that was
the way the old woman in the sitting-room commanded attention. Miss
Mitchell opened the door on a crack, that she might not let in the
cold air.

"What is it, mother?" she said.

"You get Ellen a school right away, Fanny."

"All right, mother; I'll do my best."

"Get her the grammar-school you used to have."

"All right, mother."

There was something about the imperative solicitude of the old woman
which comforted Ellen in spite of its futility as she went on her
way. The good-will of another human soul, even when it cannot be
resolved into active benefits, has undoubtedly a mighty force of its
own. Ellen, with the sweet of the cookies still lingering on her
tongue, and the sweet of the old woman's kindness in her soul, felt
refreshed as if by some subtle spiritual cake and wine. She even
went to the door of Mrs. Doty's house. Mrs. Doty was the woman who
let out wrappers to her impecunious neighbors with an undaunted
heart. She had no difficulty there. The demand for cheap wrappers
was not on the wane, even in the hard times. When Ellen reached her
grandmother's house, with a great parcel under her arm, Mrs. Zelotes
opened her side door.

"What have you got there, Ellen Brewster?" she called out sharply.

"Some wrappers," replied Ellen, cheerfully.

"Are you going to work on wrappers?"

"Yes, grandma."

The door was shut with a loud report.

When Ellen entered the house and the sitting-room, her mother looked
up from a pink wrapper which she was finishing.

"What have you got there?" she demanded.

"Some wrappers."

"Why, I haven't finished the last lot."

"These are for me to make, mother."

Andrew got up and went out of the room. Fanny shut her mouth hard,
and drew her thread through with a jerk.

"Well," she said, in a second, "take off your things, and let me
show you how to start on them. There's a little knack about it."

Chapter LVI

That was a hard winter for Rowe. Aside from the financial stress,
the elements seemed to conspire against the people who were so
ill-prepared to meet their fury. It was the coldest winter which had
been known for years; coal was higher, and the poor people had less
coal to burn. Storm succeeded storm; then, when there came a warm
spell, there was an epidemic of the grippe, and doctors' bills to
pay and quinine to buy--and quinine was very dear.

The Brewsters managed to keep up the interest on the house mortgage,
but their living expenses were reduced to the smallest possible
amount. In those days there was no wood laid ready for kindling in
the parlor stove, since there was neither any wood to spare nor
expectation of Robert's calling. Ellen and her mother sat in the
dining-room, for even the sitting-room fire had been abolished, and
they heated the dining-room whenever the weather admitted it from
the kitchen stove, and worked on the wrappers for their miserable
pittance.

The repeated storms were in a way a boon to Andrew, since he got
many jobs clearing paths, and thus secured a trifle towards the
daily expenses.

In those days Mrs. Zelotes watched the butcher-cart anxiously when
it stopped before her son's house, and she knew just what a tiny bit
of meat was purchased, and how seldom. On the days when the cart
moved on without any consultation at the tail thereof, the old woman
would buy an extra portion, cook it, and carry some over to her
son's.

Times grew harder and harder. Few of the operatives who had struck
in Lloyd's succeeded in obtaining employment elsewhere, and most of
them joined the union to enable them to do so. There was actual
privation. One evening, when the strike was some six weeks old, Abby
Atkins came over in a pouring rain to see Ellen. There were a number
of men in the dining-room that night. Amos Lee and Frank Dixon were
among them. It was a singular thing that Andrew, taking, as he had
done, no active part in any rebellion against authority, should have
come to see his house the headquarters for the rallies of
dissension. Men seemed to come to Andrew Brewster's for the sake of
bolstering themselves up in their hard position of defiance against
tremendous odds, though he sat by and seldom said a word. As for
Ellen, she and her mother on these occasions sat out in the kitchen,
sewing on the endless seams of the endless wrappers. Sometimes it
seemed to the girl as if wrappers enough were being made to clothe
not only the present, but future generations of poor women. She
seemed to see whole armies of hopeless, overburdened women, all
arrayed in these slouching garments, crowding the foreground of the
world.

That evening little Amabel, who had developed a painful desire to
make herself useful, having divined the altered state of the family
finances, was pulling out basting-threads, with a puckered little
face bent over her work. She was a very thin child, but there was an
incisive vitality in her, and somehow Fanny and Ellen contrived to
keep her prettily and comfortably clothed.

"I've got to do my duty by poor Eva's child, if I starve," Fanny
often said.

When the side door opened, Ellen and her mother thought it was
another man come to swell the company in the dining-room.

"It beats all how men like to come and sit round and talk over
matters; for my part, I 'ain't got any time to talk; I've got to
work," remarked Fanny.

"That's so," rejoined Ellen. She looked curiously like her mother
that night, and spoke like her. In her heart she echoed the sarcasm
to the full. She despised those men for sitting hour after hour in a
store, or in the house of some congenial spirit, or standing on a
street corner, and talking--talking, she was sure, to no purpose. As
for herself, she had done what she thought right; she had, as it
were, cut short the thread of her happiness of life for the sake of
something undefined and rather vague, and yet as mighty in its
demands for her allegiance as God. And it was done, and there was no
use in talking about it. She had her wrappers to make. However, she
told herself, extenuatingly, "Men can't sew, so they can't work
evenings. They are better off talking here than they would be in the
billiard-saloon."  Ellen, at that time of her life, had a slight,
unacknowledged feeling of superiority over men of her own class. She
regarded them very much as she regarded children, with a sort of
tolerant good-will and contempt. Now, suddenly, she raised her head
and listened. "That isn't another man, it's a woman--it's Abby," she
said to her mother.

"She wouldn't come out in all this rain," replied Fanny. As she
spoke, a great, wind-driven wash of it came over the windows.

"Yes, it is," said Ellen, and she jumped up and opened the
dining-room door.

Abby had entered, as was her custom, without knocking. She had left
her dripping umbrella in the entry, and her old hat was flattened on
to her head with wet, and several damp locks of her hair straggled
from under it and clung to her thin cheeks. She still held up her
wet skirts around her, as she had held them out-of-doors, but she
was gesticulating violently with her other hand. She was repeating
what she had said before. Ellen had heard her indistinctly through
the door.

"Yes, I mean just what I say," she cried. "Get up and go to work, if
you are men! Stop hanging around stores and corners, and talking
about the tyranny of the rich, and go to work, and make them pay you
something for it, anyhow. This has been kept up long enough. Get up
and go to work, if you don't want those belonging to you to starve."

Abby caught sight of Ellen, pale and breathless, in the door, with
her mother looking over her shoulder, and she addressed her with
renewed violence. "Come here, Ellen," she said, "and put yourself on
my side. We've got to give in."

"You go away," cried little Amabel, in a shrill voice, looking
around Ellen's arm; but nobody paid any attention to her.

"I never will," returned Ellen, with a great flash, but her voice
trembled.

"You've got to," said Abby. "I tell you there's no other way."

"I'll die before I give up," cried Lee, in a loud, threatening
voice.

"I'm with ye," said Tom Peel.

Dixon and the young laster who sat beside him looked at each other,
but said nothing. Dixon wrinkled his forehead over his pipe.

"Then you'd better go to work quick, before some that I know of, who
are enough sight better worth saving than you are, starve," replied
Abby, unshrinkingly. "If I could I would go to Lloyd's and open it
on my own account to-morrow. I believe in bravery, but nothing
except fools and swine jump over precipices."

Abby passed through the room, sprinkling rain-drops from her
drenched skirts, and went into the kitchen with Ellen. Fanny cast an
angry glance at her, then a solicitous one at her dripping garments.

"Abby Atkins, you haven't got any rubbers on," said she.

"Rubbers!" repeated Abby.

"You just slip off those wet skirts, and Amabel will fetch you down
Ellen's old black petticoat and brown dress. Amabel--"

But Abby seated herself peremptorily before the kitchen stove and
extended one soaked little foot in its shabby boot. "I'm past
thinking or caring about wet skirts," said she. "Good Lord, what do
wet skirts matter? We can't make wrappers any longer. We had to sell
the sewing-machine yesterday to pay the rent or be turned out, and
we haven't got a thing to eat in the house except potatoes and a
little flour. We haven't had any meat for a week. Nice fare for a
man like poor father and a girl like Maria! We have come down to the
kitchen fire like you, but we can't keep it burning as late as this.
The rest went to bed an hour ago to keep warm. Maria has got more
cold. She did seem better one spell, but now she's worse again. Our
chamber is freezing cold, and we haven't had a fire in it since the
strike. John Sargent has ransacked every town within twenty miles
for work, but he can't get any, and his sick sister keeps sending to
him for money. He looks as if he was just about done, too. He went
off somewhere after supper. A great supper! He don't smoke a pipe
nowadays. Father don't get the medicine he ought to have, and that
cold spell he just about perished for a little whiskey. The bedroom
was like ice with no fire in the sitting-room, and he didn't sleep
warm. It's one awful thing after another happening. Did you know
Mamie Brady took laudanum last night?"

"Good land!" said Fanny.

"Yes, she did. Ed Flynn has been playing fast and loose with her for
a long time, and she's none too well balanced, and when it came to
her not having enough to eat, and to keep her warm, and her mother
nagging at her all the time--you know what an awful hard woman her
mother is--she got desperate. She gulped it down when the last car
went past and Ed Flynn hadn't come; she had been watchin' out for
him; then she told her mother, and her mother shook her, then run
for Dr. Fox, and he called in Dr. Lord, and they worked with a
stomach-pump till morning, and she isn't out of danger yet. Then
that isn't all. Willy Jones's mother is failing. He was over to our
house last evening, telling us about it, and he fairly cried, poor
boy. He said he actually could not get her what she needed to make
her comfortable this awful winter. It was all he could do with odd
jobs to keep the roof over their heads, that she hadn't actually
enough to eat and keep her warm. It seemed as if he would die when
he told about it. And that isn't all. Those little Blake children
next door are fairly starving. They are going around to the
neighbors' swill-buckets--it's a fact--just like little hungry dogs,
and it's precious little they find in them. Mrs. Wetherhed has let
her sewing-machine go, and Edward Morse is going to be sold out for
taxes. And that isn't all."  Abby lowered her voice a little. She
cast an apprehensive glance at the door of the other room, and at
Amabel. "Mamie Bemis has gone to the bad. I had it straight. She's
in Boston. She didn't have enough to pay for her board, and got
desperate. I know her sister did wrong, but that was no reason why
she should have, and I don't believe she would if it hadn't been for
the strike. It's all on account of the strike. There's no use
talking: before the sparrow flies in the eyes of the tiger, he'd
better count the cost."

Fanny, quite white, stood staring from Abby to Ellen, and back
again.

Amabel was holding fast to a fold of Ellen's skirt. Ellen looked
rigid.

"I knew it all before," she said, in a low voice.

Suddenly Abby jumped up and caught the other girl in a fierce
embrace. "Ellen," she sobbed--"Ellen, isn't there any way out of it?
I can't see--"

Ellen freed herself from Abby with a curious imperative yet gentle
motion, then she opened the door into the other room again. The loud
clash of voices hushed, and every man faced towards her standing on
the threshold, with her mother and Abby and little Amabel in the
background. "I want to say to you all," said Ellen, in a clear
voice, "that I think I did wrong. I have been wondering if I had not
for some time, and growing more and more certain. I did not count
the cost. All I thought of was the principle, but the cost is a part
of the principle in this world, and it has to be counted in with it.
I see now. I don't think the strike ought ever to have been. It has
brought about too much suffering upon those who were not responsible
for it, who did not choose it of their own free will. There are
children starving, and people dying and breaking their hearts. We
have brought too much upon ourselves and others. I am sorry I said
what I did in the shop that day, if I influenced any one. Now I am
not going to strike any longer. Let us all accept Mr. Lloyd's terms,
and go back to work."

But Ellen's voice was drowned out in a great shout of wrath and
dissent from Lee. He directly leaped to the conclusion that the girl
took this attitude on account of Lloyd, and his jealousy, which was
always smouldering, flamed.

"Well, I guess not!" he shouted. "I rather guess not! I've struck,
and I'm going to stay struck! I ain't goin' to back out because a
girl likes the boss, damn him!"

Andrew and the young laster rose and moved quietly before Ellen. Tom
Peel said nothing, but he grinned imperturbably.

"I 'ain't had a bit of tobacco, and the less said about what I've
had to eat the better," Lee went on, in a loud, threatening voice,
"but I ain't going to give up. No, miss; you've het up the fightin'
blood in me, and it ain't so easy coolin' of it down."

The door opened, and Granville Joy entered. He had knocked several
times, but nobody had heard him. He looked inquiringly from one to
another, then moved beside Andrew and the laster.

Dixon got up. "It looks to me as if it was too soon to be giving up
now," he said.

"It's easy for a man who's got nobody dependent upon him to talk,"
cried Abby.

"I won't give up!" cried Dixon, looking straight at Ellen, and
ignoring Abby.

"That's so," said Lee. "We don't give up our rights for bosses, or
bosses' misses."

As he said that there was a concerted movement of Andrew, the
laster, and Granville. Granville was much slighter than Lee, but
suddenly his right arm shot out, and the other man went down like a
log. Andrew followed him up with a kick.

"Get out of my house," he shouted, "and never set foot in it again!
Out with ye!"

Lee was easily cowed. He did not attempt to make any resistance, but
gathered himself up, muttering, and moved before the three into the
entry, where he had left his coat and hat. Dixon and Peel followed
him. When the door was shut, Ellen turned to the others, with a
quieting hand on Amabel's head, who was clinging to her, trembling.

"I think it will be best to talk to John Sargent," said she. "I
think a committee had better be appointed to wait upon Mr. Lloyd
again, and ask him to open the factory. I'm not going to strike any
longer."

"I'm sure I'm not," said Abby.

"Abby and I are not going to strike any longer," said Ellen, in an
indescribably childlike way, which yet carried enormous weight with
it.

Chapter LVII

Ellen had not arrived at her decision with regard to the strike as
suddenly as it may have seemed. All winter, ever since the strike,
Ellen had been wondering, not whether the principle of the matter
was correct or not, that she never doubted; she never swerved in her
belief concerning the cruel tyranny of the rich and the helpless
suffering of the poor, and their good reason for making a stand, but
she doubted more and more the wisdom of it. She used to sit for
hours up in her chamber after her father and mother had gone to bed,
wrapped up in an old shawl against the cold, resting her elbows on
the window-sill and her chin on her two hands, staring out into the
night, and reflecting. Her youthful enthusiasm carried her like a
leaping-pole to conclusions beyond her years. "I wonder," she said
to herself, "if, after all, this inequality of possessions is not a
part of the system of creation, if the righting of them is not
beyond the flaming sword of the Garden of Eden? I wonder if the one
who tries to right them forcibly is not meddling, and usurping the
part of the Creator, and bringing down wrath and confusion not only
upon his own head, but upon the heads of others? I wonder if it is
wise, in order to establish a principle, to make those who have no
voice in the matter suffer for it--the helpless women and children?"
 She even thought with a sort of scornful sympathy of Sadie Peel,
who could not have her nearseal cape, and had not wished to strike.
She reflected, as she had done so many times before, that the world
was very old--thousands of years old--and inequality was as old as
the world. Might it not even be a condition of its existence, the
shifting of weights which kept it to its path in the scheme of the
universe? And yet always she went back to her firm belief that the
strikers were right, and always, although she loved Robert Lloyd,
she denounced him. Even when it came to her abandoning her position
with regard to the strike, she had not the slightest thought of
effecting thereby a reconciliation with Robert.

For the first time, that night when she had gone to bed, after
announcing her determination to go back to work, she questioned her
affection for Robert. Before she had always admitted it to herself
with a sort of shamed and angry dignity. "Other women feel so about
men, and why should I not?" she had said; "and I shall never fail to
keep the feeling behind more important things."  She had accepted
the fact of it with childlike straightforwardness as she accepted
all other facts of life, and now she wondered if she really did care
for him so much. She thought over and over everything Abby had said,
and saw plainly before her mental vision those poor women parting
with their cherished possessions, the little starving children
snatching at the refuse-buckets at the neighbors' back doors. She
saw with incredulous shame, and something between pity and scorn,
Mamie Bemis, who had gone wrong, and Mamie Brady, who had taken her
foolish, ill-balanced life in her own hands. She remembered every
word which she had said to the men on the morning of the strike, and
how they had started up and left their machines. "I did it all," she
told herself. "I am responsible for it all--all this suffering, for
those hungry little children, for that possible death, for the ruin
of another girl."  Then she told herself, with a stern sense of
justice, that back of her responsibility came Robert Lloyd's. If he
had not cut the wages it would never have been. It seemed to her
that she almost hated him, and that she could not wait to strive to
undo the harm which she had done. She could not wait for morning to
come.

She lay awake all night in a fever of impatience. When she went
down-stairs her eyes were brilliant, there were red spots on her
cheeks, her lips were tense, her whole face looked as if she were
strained for some leap of action. She took hold of everything she
touched with a hard grip. Her father and mother kept watching her
anxiously. Directly after breakfast Ellen put on her hat and coat.

"What are you going to do?" asked Fanny.

"I am going over to see John Sargent, and ask him to get some other
men and go to see Mr. Lloyd, and tell him we are willing to go to
work again," replied Ellen.

Ellen discovered, when she reached the Atkins house, that John
Sargent had already resolved upon his course of action.

"The first thing he said when he came in last night was that he
couldn't stand it any longer, and he was going to see the others,
and go to Lloyd, and ask him to open the shop on his own terms,"
said Abby. "I told him how we felt about it."

"Yes, I am ready to go back whenever the factory is opened," said
Ellen. "I am glad he has gone."

Ellen did not remain long. She was anxious to return and finish some
wrappers she had on hand. Abby promised to go over and let her know
the result of the interview with Lloyd.

It was not until evening that Abby came over, and John Sargent with
her. Lloyd had not been at home in the morning, and they had been
forced to wait until late afternoon. The two entered the
dining-room, where Ellen and her mother sat at work.

Abby spoke at once, and to the point. "Well," said she, "the shop's
going to be opened to-morrow."

"On what terms?" asked Ellen.

"On the boss's, of course," replied Abby, in a hard voice.

"It's the only thing to do," said Sargent, with a sort of stolid
assertion. "If we are willing to be crushed under the Juggernaut of
principle, we haven't any right to force others under, and that's
what we are doing."

"Bread without butter is better than no bread at all," said Abby.
"We've got to live in the sphere in which Providence has placed us."
 The girl said "Providence" with a sarcastic emphasis.

Andrew was looking at Sargent. "Do you think there will be any
trouble?" he asked.

Sargent hesitated, with a glance at Fanny. "I don't know; I hope
not," said he. "Lee and Dixon are opposed to giving in, and they are
talking hard to-night in the store. Then some of the men have joined
the union since the strike, and of course they swear by it, because
it has been helping them, and they won't approve of giving up. But I
doubt if there will be much trouble. I guess the majority want to go
to work, even the union men. The amount of it is, it has been such a
tough winter it has taken the spirit out of the poor souls."
Sargent, evidently, in yielding was resisting himself.

"You don't think there will be any danger?" Fanny said, anxiously,
looking at Ellen.

"Oh no, there's no danger for the girls, anyhow. I guess there's
enough men to look out for them. There's no need for you to worry,
Mrs. Brewster."

"Mr. Lloyd did not offer to do anything better about the wages?"
asked Ellen.

Sargent shook his head.

"Catch him!" said Abby, bitterly.

Ellen had a feeling as if she were smiting in the face that image of
Robert which always dwelt in her heart.

"Well," said Abby, with a mirthless laugh, "there's one thing:
according to the Scriptures, it is as hard for the rich man to get
into heaven as it is for the poor men to get into their factories."

"You don't suppose there will be any danger?" Fanny said again,
anxiously.

"Danger--no; who's afraid of Amos Lee and a few like him?" cried
Abby, contemptuously; "and Nahum Beals is safe. He's going to be
tried next month, they say, but they'll make it imprisonment for
life, because they think he wasn't in his right mind. If he was here
we might be afraid, but there's nobody now that will do anything but
talk. I ain't afraid. I'm going to march up to the shop to-morrow
morning and go to work, and I'd like to see anybody stop me."

However, before they left, John Sargent spoke aside with Andrew, and
told him of a plan for the returning workmen to meet at the corner
of a certain street, and go in a body to the factory, and suggested
that there might be pickets posted by the union men, and Andrew
resolved to go with Ellen.

The next morning the rain had quite ceased, and there was a faint
something, rather a reminiscence than a suggestion, of early spring
in the air. People caught themselves looking hard at the elm
branches to see if they were acquiring the virile fringe of spring
or if their eyes deceived them, and wondered, with respect to the
tips of maple and horse-chestnut branches, whether or not they were
swollen red and glossy. Sometimes they sniffed incredulously when a
soft gust of south wind seemed laden with fresh blossom fragrance.

"I declare, if I didn't know better, I should think I smelled apple
blossoms," said Maria.

"Stuff!" returned Abby. She was marching along with an alert,
springy motion of her lean little body. She was keenly alive to the
situation, and scented something besides apple blossoms. She had
tried to induce Maria to remain at home. "I don't know but there'll
be trouble, and if there is, you'll be just in the way," she told
her before they left the house, but not in their parents' hearing.

"Oh, I don't believe there'll be any. Folks will be too glad to get
back to work," replied Maria. She had a vein of obstinacy, gentle as
she was; then, too, she had a reason which no one suspected for
wishing to be present. She would not yield when John Sargent begged
her privately not to go. It was just because she was afraid there
might be trouble, and he was going to be in it, that she could not
bear to stay at home herself.

Andrew had insisted upon accompanying Ellen in spite of her
remonstrances. "I've got an errand down to the store," he said,
evasively; but Ellen understood.

"I don't think there is any danger, and there wouldn't be any danger
for me--not for the girls, sure," she said; but he persisted.

"Don't you say a word to your mother to scare her," he whispered.
But they had not been gone long before Fanny followed them, Mrs.
Zelotes watching her furtively from a window as she went by.

All the returning employés met, as agreed upon, at the corner of a
certain street, and marched in a solid body towards Lloyd's. The men
insisted upon placing the girls in the centre of this body, although
some of them rebelled, notably Sadie Peel. She was on hand, laughing
and defiant.

"I guess I ain't afraid," she proclaimed. "Father's keepin' on
strikin', but I guess he won't see his own daughter hurt; and now
I'm goin' to have my nearseal cape, if it is late in the season.
They're cheaper now, that's one good thing. On some accounts the
strike has been a lucky thing for me."  She marched along, swinging
her arms jauntily. Ellen and Maria and Abby were close together.
Andrew was on the right of Ellen, Granville Joy behind; the young
laster, who had called so frequently evenings, was with him. John
Sargent and Willy Jones were on the left. They all walked in the
middle of the street like an army. It was covertly understood that
there might be trouble. Some of the younger men from time to time
put hands on their pockets, and a number carried stout sticks.

The first intimation of disturbance came when they met an
electric-car, and all moved to one side to let it pass. The car was
quite full of people going to another town, some thirty miles
distant, to work in a large factory there. Nearly every man and
woman on the car belonged to the union.

As this car slid past a great yell went up from the occupants; men
on the platforms swung their arms in execration and derision.
"Sc-ab, sc-ab!" they called. A young fellow leaped from the rear
platform, caught up a stone and flung it at the returning Lloyd men,
but it went wide of its mark. Then he was back on the platform with
a running jump, and one of the Lloyd men threw a stone, which missed
him. The yell of "Scab, scab!" went up with renewed vigor, until it
died out of hearing along with the rumble of the car.

"Sometimes I wish I had joined the union and stuck it out," said one
of the Lloyd men, gloomily.

"For the Lord's sake, don't show the white feather now!" cried a
young fellow beside him, who was striding on with an eager, even
joyous outlook. He had fighting blood, and it was up, and he took a
keen delight in the situation.

"It's easy to talk," grumbled the other man. "I don't know but all
our help lies in the union, and we've been a pack of fools not to go
in with them, because we hoped Lloyd would weaken and take us back.
He hasn't weakened; we've had to. Good God, them that's rich have it
their own way!"

"I'd have joined the union in a minute, and got a job, and got my
nearseal cape, if it hadn't been for father," said Sadie Peel, with
a loud laugh. "But, my land! if father'd caught me joinin' the union
I dun'no' as there would have been anything left of me to wear the
cape."

They all marched along with no disturbance until they reached the
corner of the street into which they had to turn in order to
approach Lloyd's. There they were confronted by a line of pickets,
stationed there by the union, and the real trouble began. Yells of
"Scab, scab!" filled the air.

"Good land, I ain't no more of a scab than you be!" shrieked Sadie
Peel, in a loud, angry voice. "Scab yourself! Touch me if you
dasse!"

Many young men among the returning force had stout sticks in their
hands. Granville Joy was one of them. Andrew, who was quite unarmed,
pressed in before Ellen. Granville caught him by the arm and tried
to draw him back.

"Look here, Mr. Brewster," he said, "you keep in the background a
little. I am young and strong, and here are Sargent and Mendon.
You'd better keep back."

But Ellen, with a spring which was effectual because so utterly
uncalculated, was before Granville and her father, and them all. She
reasoned it out in a second that she was responsible for the strike,
and that she would be in the front of whatever danger there was in
consequence. Her slight little figure passed them all before they
knew what she was doing. She was in the very front of the little
returning army. She saw the threatening faces of the pickets; she
half turned, and waved an arm of encouragement, like a general in a
battle. "Strike if you want to," she cried out, in her sweet young
voice. "If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save
herself and her friends from starvation, do it. I am not afraid! But
kill me, if you must kill anybody, because I am the one that started
the strike. Strike if you want to."

[Illustration: If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save
herself from starvation, do it!]

The opposing force moved aside with an almost imperceptible motion.
Ellen looked like a beautiful child, her light hair tossed around
her rosy face, her eyes full of the daring of perfect confidence.
She in reality did not feel one throb of fear. She passed the
picket-line, and turned instinctively and marched backward with her
blue eyes upon them all. Abby Atkins sprang forward to Ellen's side,
with Sargent and Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew. Andrew kept calling
to Ellen to come back, but she did not heed him.

The little army was several rods from the pickets before a shot rang
out, but that was fired into the air. However, it was followed by a
fierce clamor of "Scab" and a shower of stones, which did little
harm. The Lloyds marched on without a word, except from Sadie Peel.
She turned round with a derisive shout.

"Scab yourselves!" she shrieked. "You dassen't fire at me. You're
scabs yourselves, you be!"

"Scabs, scabs!" shouted the men, moving forward.

"Scab yourself!" shouted Sadie Peel.

Abby Atkins caught hold of her arm and shook her violently. "Shut
up, can't you, Sadie Peel," she said.

"I'll shut up when I get ready, Abby Atkins! I ain't afraid of them
if you be. They dassen't hit me. Scab, scab!" the girl yelled back,
with a hysteric laugh.

"Don't that girl know anything?" growled a man behind her.

"Shut up, Sadie Peel," said Abby Atkins.

"I ain't afraid if you be, and I won't shut up till I get ready, for
you or anybody else. I'm goin' to have my nearseal cape! Hi!"

"I ain't afraid," said Abby, contemptuously, "but I've got sense."

Maria pressed close to Sadie Peel. "Please do keep still, Sadie,"
she pleaded. "Let us get into the factory as quietly as we can.
Think, if anybody was hurt."

"I ain't afraid," shrieked the girl, with a toss of her red fringe,
and she laughed like a parrot. Abby Atkins gripped her arm so
fiercely that she made her cry out with pain. "If you don't keep
still!" she said, threateningly.

Willy Jones was walking as near as he could, and he carried his
right arm half extended, as if to guard her. Now and then Abby
turned and gave him a push backward.

"They won't trouble us girls, and you might as well let us and the
men that have sticks go first," she said in a whisper.

"If you think--" began the young fellow, coloring.

"Oh, I know you ain't afraid," said Abby, "but you've got your
mother to think of, and there's no use in running into danger."

The pickets were gradually left behind; they were, in truth,
half-hearted. Many of them had worked in Lloyd's, and had small mind
to injure their old comrades. They were not averse to a great show
of indignation and bluster, but when it came to more they hesitated.

Presently the company came into the open space before Lloyd's.
Robert and Lyman Risley and several foremen were standing at the
foot of the stairs. The windows of the factory were filled with
faces, and derisive cries came from them. Lloyd's tall shaft of
chimney was plumed with smoke. The employés advanced towards the
stairs, when suddenly Amos Lee, Dixon, and a dozen others appeared,
coming with a rush from around a corner of the building, and again
the air was filled with the cry of "Scab!"  Ellen and Abby linked
arms and sprang forward before the men with an impetuous rush, with
Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew following. Ellen, as she rushed on
towards the factory stairs, was conscious of no fear at all, but
rather of a sort of exaltation of courage. It did not really occur
to her that she could be hurt, that it could be in the heart of Lee
or Dixon, or any of them, actually to harm her. She was throbbing
and intense with indignation and resolution. Into that factory to
her work she was bound to go. All that intimidated her in the least
was the fear for her father. She rushed as fast as she could that
her father might not get before her and be hurt in some way.

"Scab! scab!" shouted Lee and the others.

"Scab yourself!" shrieked Sadie Peel. Her father was one of the
opposing party, and that gave her perfect audacity. "Look out you
don't hit me, dad," she cried to him. "I'm goin' to get my nearseal
cape. Don't you hit your daughter, Tom Peel!"  She raced on with a
sort of hoppity-skip. She caught a young man near her by the arm and
forced him into the same dancing motion.

They were at the foot of the stairs, when Robert, watching, saw Lee
with a pistol in his hand aim straight at Ellen. He sprang before
her, but Risley was nearer, and the shot struck him. When Risley
fell, a great cry, it would have been difficult to tell whether of
triumph or horror, went up from the open windows of the other
factories, and men came swarming out. Lee and his companions
vanished.

A great crowd gathered around Risley until the doctors came and
ordered them away, and carried him in the ambulance to the hospital.
He was not dead, but evidently very seriously injured.

When the ambulance had rolled out of sight, the Lloyd employés
entered the factory, and the hum of machinery began.

Fanny and Andrew stood together before the factory after Ellen had
entered. Andrew had started when he had seen his wife.

"You here?" he said.

"I rather guess I'm here," returned Fanny. "Do you s'pose I was
goin' to stay at home, and not know whether you and her were shot
dead or not?"

"I guess it's all safe now," said Andrew. He was very pale. He
looked at the blood-stained place where Lyman Risley had lain. "It's
awful work," he said.

"Who did it?" asked Fanny, sharply. "I heard the shot just before I
got here."

"I don't know for sure, and guess it's better I don't," replied
Andrew, sternly.

Then all at once as they stood there a woman came up with a swift,
gliding motion and a long trail of black skirts straight to Fanny,
who was the only woman there. There were still a great many men and
boys standing about. The woman, Cynthia Lennox, caught Fanny's arm
with a nervous grip. Her finely cut face was very white under the
nodding plumes of her black bonnet.

"Is he in there?" she asked, in a strained voice, pointing to the
shop.

Fanny stared at her. She was half dazed. She did not know whether
she was referring to the wounded man or Robert.

Andrew was quicker in his perceptions.

"They carried him off to the hospital in the ambulance," he told
her. Then he added, as gently as if he had been addressing Ellen: "I
guess he wasn't hurt so very bad. He came to before they took him
away."

"You don't know anything about it," Fanny said, sharply. "I heard
them say something about his eyes."

"His eyes!" gasped Cynthia. She held tightly to Fanny, who looked at
her with a sudden passion of sympathy breaking through her
curiosity.

"Oh, I guess he wasn't hurt so very bad; he _did_ come to. I heard
him speak," she said, soothingly. She laid her hard hand over
Cynthia's slim one.

"They took him to the hospital?"

"Yes, in the ambulance."

"Is--my nephew in there?"

"No; he went with him."

Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter
anguish and pleading.

"Look here," said Fanny; "the hospital ain't very far from here.
Suppose we go up there and ask how he is? We could call out your
nephew."

"Will you go with me?" asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.

If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have
recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood. She
was an utter surprise to Fanny, but her sympathy leaped to meet her
need like the steel to the magnet.

"Of course I will," she said, heartily.

"I would," said Andrew--"I would go with her, Fanny."

"Of course I will," said Fanny; "and you had better go home, I
guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire. I don't know but
the dampers are all wide open."

Fanny and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital,
and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked
thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd's. The battle was over
and the strike was ended. He drew a great sigh, and went home to see
to the kitchen fire.

Chapter LVIII

Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had
reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the
reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely
recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples,
her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and
clutched his arm.

"How is he?" she demanded. "Tell me quick!"

"They are doing everything they can for him. Why, don't, poor Aunt
Cynthia!"

"His eyes, they said--"

"I hope he will come out all right. Don't, dear Aunt Cynthia."  The
young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing
like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of
delicacy in a woman's heart.

Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true
self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her
reserve. "Oh," she said--"oh, if he--if he is--blind, if he
is--I--I--will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will,
Robert."

"Of course you will, dear Aunt Cynthia," replied Robert, soothingly.

Suddenly Cynthia's face took on a new expression. She looked at
Robert, deadly pale, and her jaw dropped. "He will not--die," she
said, with stiff lips. "It is not as bad as that?"

"Oh no, no; I am sure he will not," Robert cried, wonderingly and
pityingly. "Don't, Aunt Cynthia."

"If he dies," she said--"if he dies--and he has loved me all this
time, and I have never done anything for him--I cannot bear it; I
will not bear it; I will not, Robert!"

"Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia."

"I want to go to him," she said. "I _will_ go to him."

Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. "I am afraid you can't
just now, Aunt Cynthia," he replied.

Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. "Of course you can't, Miss
Lennox," she said. "The doctors won't let you see him now. You would
do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!"

"No, I don't want to do him harm," returned Cynthia, in a wailing,
hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began
sobbing like a child, with her face hidden.

A young doctor entered and stood looking at her.

Robert turned to him. "It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr.
Risley's accident," he said, coloring a little.

Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of
astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. "Oh,
my dear Miss Lennox," he said, "there is no cause for agitation, I
assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley."

"Will he be blind?" gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe,
which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such
an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted
with grief and unable to control it.

The young doctor laughed blandly. "Blind? No, indeed," he replied.
"He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago,
but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter.
Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox."

"Can you call a carriage for my aunt?" asked Robert. He went close
to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. "I am going to
have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be
willing to go home with you in it."

"Of course I will," replied Fanny.

"You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed
about," Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his
aunt's ear.

Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she
was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the
window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, "Robert, you must
come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here
and see him myself."

"Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia," he replied, soothingly. He met the
doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping
mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect
that--why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for
that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle
after her so many years? But he merely said:

"There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further
when she is in such a state of mind, but--"  Then he paused
significantly.

"You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?" said
Robert.

"Mighty poor," replied the doctor.

Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the
carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it
all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible
fact with an infinite pain.

"Have they got the man that did it?" asked the doctor.

"I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley," replied Robert. "I hope
to God they have."  Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety,
of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? "I must go back to
the factory," he said, hurriedly. "I will be back here in an hour or
so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you
can!"

Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was
full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot
which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered
the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the
street corner, and jumped in, and bade the man drive fast.

When Robert entered the great building, and felt the old vibration
of machinery, he had a curious sensation, one which he had never
before had and which he had not expected. For the first time in his
life he knew what it was to have a complete triumph of his own will
over his fellow-men. He had gotten his own way. All this army of
workmen, all this machinery of labor, was set in motion at his
desire, in opposition to their own. He realized himself a leader and
a conqueror. He went into the office, and Flynn and Dennison came
forward, smiling, to greet him.

"Well," said Dennison, "we're off again."  He spoke as if the
factory were a ship which had been launched from a shoal.

"Yes," replied Robert, gravely.

Nellie Stone, at the desk, was glancing around, with a half-shy,
half-coquettish look.

"How is Mr. Risley?" asked Flynn.

"He is badly hurt," replied Robert. "Have they found the man? Do you
know what has been done about it?"

"They've got all the police force of the city out," replied Flynn,
"but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a
gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of
traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under
arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and
they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work."
 Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he
fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had
gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had
gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she
recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had
watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious
effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to
one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. "I'm going to tell
you, Mr. Lloyd," he said, rather awkwardly; "maybe you won't be
interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the
strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor
girl."

Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the
slightest idea what he was talking about.

"I'm going to marry Mamie Brady," explained Flynn. "She took
laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd
been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't
been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a hell.
I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it."

"It's mighty good of you," Robert said, rather stupidly.

"There ain't no other way for me to do," replied Flynn. "She thinks
the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame."

"I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy," said
Robert.

"She thinks all creation of me," replied Flynn, with the simplest
vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the
world. "That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley," said Flynn, as
Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself
would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was
going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all
his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his
heart; that was inevitable.

"I know it wasn't," Robert replied, grimly.

"Everything is quiet now," said Dennison, with his smooth smile.
Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. "He's mighty
stand-offish, now he's got his own way," Dennison remarked in a
whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had
followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was
unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a
little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness.

"I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie
Brady, after all," she whispered.

Dennison nodded.

She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned
his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She
made a little impatient motion.

"Oh, go long, Jim Dennison," she said, but her tone was
half-hearted.

Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed
her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly.

"You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're
Baptist, Nell," he said.

"Who said I did?" she retorted, angrily. "Why, I wouldn't marry Ed
Flynn if he was the last man in the world."

"You'd 'nough sight better marry me," said Dennison.

"Go along; you're fooling."

"No, I ain't. I mean it, honest."

"I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile," said Nellie Stone; but
when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even
nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of
his shoulder.

Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.

"Say!" he proclaimed, "what do you think? The boss has just told the
hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five
instead of ten per cent."

Chapter LIX

When Robert Lloyd entered the factory that morning he experienced
one of those revulsions which come to man in common with all
creation. As the wind can swerve from south to east, and its
swerving be a part of the universal scheme of things, so the
inconsistency of a human soul can be an integral part of its
consistency. Robert, entering Lloyd's, flushed with triumph over his
workmen, filled also with rage whenever he thought of poor Risley,
became suddenly, to all appearances, another man. However, he was
the same man, only he had come under some hidden law of growth. All
at once, as he stood there amidst those whirring and clamping
machines, and surveyed those bowed and patient backs and swaying
arms of labor, standing aside to allow a man bending before a heavy
rack of boots to push it to another department, he realized that his
triumph was gone.

Not a man or woman in the factory looked at him. All continued
working with a sort of patient fierceness, as if storming a
citadel--as, indeed, they were in one sense--and waging incessant
and in the end hopeless warfare against the destructive forces of
life. Robert stood in the midst of them, these fellow-beings who had
bowed to his will, and saw, as if by some divine revelation, in his
foes his brothers and sisters. He saw Ellen's fair head before her
machine, and she seemed the key-note of a heart-breaking yet
ineffable harmony of creation which he heard for the first time. He
was a man whom triumph did not exalt as much as it humiliated. Who
was he to make these men and women do his bidding? They were working
as hard as they had worked for full pay. Without doubt he would not
gain as much comparatively, but he was going to lose nothing
actually, and he would not work as these men worked. He saw himself
as he never could have seen himself had the strike continued; and
yet, after all, he was not a woman, to be carried away by a sudden
wave of generous sentiment and enthusiasm, for his business
instincts were too strong, inherited and developed by the force of
example. He could not forget that this had been his uncle's factory.

He shut his mouth hard, and stood looking at the scene of toil, then
he resolved what to do.

He spoke to Flynn, who could not believe his ears, and asked him
over.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said.

"Go and speak to the engineer, and tell him to shut down," said
Robert.

"You ain't going to turn them out, after all?" gasped Flynn. He was
deadly white.

"No, I am not. I only want to speak to them," replied Robert,
shortly.

When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the
employés, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and
menace. They anticipated the worst by this order.

"I want to say to you all," said Robert, in a loud, clear voice,
"that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with
the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per
cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business
improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard
times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to
employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I
will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any
measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business
improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former
standard at once."

The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish.
Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous
and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man. The workmen
stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus
of "Thank ye's," with two or three shrill crows of cheers.

Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work
recommenced.

"He's the right sort, after all," said Granville Joy to John
Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it. He was very
thin and pale. He had suffered privations, and now came additional
worry of mind. He could not help thinking that this might bring
about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his
spiritual dues at any cost.

"It's no more than he ought to do," growled a man at Granville's
right. "S'pose he does lose a little money?"

"It ain't many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a
little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that," said
John Sargent. He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking
with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his
sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so
pinched. He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of
the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the
necessities of others had almost forced him there. Now and then he
glanced across the room at Maria, whose narrow shoulders he could
see bent painfully over her work. He was in love with Maria, but no
one suspected it, least of all Maria herself.

"Lord! don't talk about the New Testament. Them days is past,"
growled the man on the other side of Joy.

"They ain't past for me," said John Sargent, stoutly. A dark flush
rose to his cheek as if he were making a confession of love.

"Lord! don't preach," said the other man, with a sneer.

Ellen had stopped work with the rest when Robert addressed them.
Then she recommenced her stitching without a word. Her thoughts were
in confusion. She had so long held one attitude towards him that she
could not readily adjust herself to another. She was cramped with
the extreme narrowness of the enthusiasm of youth. At noontime she
heard all the talk which went on about him. She heard some praise
him, and some speak of him as simply doing his manifest duty, and
some say openly that he should have put the wages back upon the
former footing, and she did not know which was right. He did not
come near her, and she was very glad of that. She felt that she
could not bear it to have him speak to her before them all.

When she went home at night the news had preceded her. Fanny and
Andrew looked up eagerly when she entered. "I hear he has
compromised," said Andrew, with doubtful eyes on the girl's face.

"Yes; he has cut the wages five instead of ten per cent.," replied
Ellen, and it was impossible to judge of her feelings by her voice.
She took off her hat and smoothed her hair.

"Well, I am glad he has done that much," said Fanny, "but I won't
say a word as long as you ain't hurt."

With that she went into the kitchen, and Ellen and Andrew heard the
dishes rattle. "Your mother's been dreadful nervous," whispered
Andrew. He looked at Ellen meaningly. Both of them thought of poor
Eva Tenny. Lately the reports with regard to her had been more
encouraging, but she was still in the asylum.

Suddenly, as they stood there, a swift shadow passed the window, and
they heard a shrill scream from up-stairs. It sounded like "Mamma,
mamma!"  "It's Amabel!" cried Ellen. She clutched her father by the
arm. "Oh, what is it--who is it?" she whispered, fearfully.

Andrew was suddenly white and horror-stricken. He took hold of
Ellen, and pushed her forcibly before him into the parlor. "You stay
in there till I call you," he said, in a commanding voice, the like
of which the girl had never heard from him before; then he shut the
door, and she heard the key turn in the lock.

"Father, I can't stay in here," cried Ellen. She ran towards the
other door into the front hall, but before she could reach it she
heard the key turn in that also. Andrew was convinced that Eva had
escaped from the asylum, and thus made sure of Ellen's safety in
case she was violent. Then he rushed out into the kitchen, and there
was Amabel clinging to her mother like a little wild thing, and
Fanny weeping aloud.

When Andrew entered Fanny flew to him. "O Andrew--O Andrew!" she
cried. "Eva's come out! She's well! she's cured! She's as well as
anybody! She is! She says so, and I know she is! Only look at her!"

"Mamma, mamma!" gasped Amabel, in a strange, little, pent voice,
which did not sound like a child's. There was something fairly
inhuman about it. "Mamma," as she said it, did not sound like a word
in any known language. It was like a cry of universal childhood for
its parent. Amabel clung to her mother, not only with her slender
little arms, but with her legs and breast and neck; all her slim
body became as a vine with tendrils of love and growth around her
mother.

As for Eva, she could not have enough of her. She was intoxicated
with the possession of this little creature of her own flesh and
blood.

"She's grown; she's grown so tall," she said, in a high, panting
voice. It was all she could seem to realize--the fact that the child
had grown so tall--and it filled her at once with ineffable pain and
delight. She held the little thing so close to her that the two
seemed fairly one. "Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel again.

"She has--grown so tall," panted Eva.

Fanny went up to her and tried gently to loosen her grasp of the
little girl. In her heart she was not yet quite sure of her. This
fierceness of delight began to alarm her. "Of course she has grown
tall, Eva Tenny," she said. "It's quite a while since you
were--taken sick."

"I ain't sick now," said Eva, in a steady voice. "I'm cured now. The
doctors say so. You needn't be afraid, Fanny Brewster."

"Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel. Eva bent down and kissed the little,
delicate face; then she looked at her sister and at Andrew, and her
own countenance seemed fairly illuminated. "I 'ain't _told_ you
all," said she. Then she stopped and hesitated.

"What is it, Eva?" asked Fanny, looking at her with increasing
courage. The tears were streaming openly down her cheeks. "Oh, you
poor girl, what have you been through?" she said. "What is it?"

"I 'ain't got to go through anything more," said Eva, still with
that rapt look over Amabel's little, fair head. "He's--come back."

"Eva Tenny!"

"Yes, he has," Eva went on, with such an air of inexpressible
triumph that it had almost a religious quality in it. "He has. He
left her a long time ago. He--he wanted to come back to me and
Amabel, but he was ashamed, but finally he came to the asylum, and
then it all rolled off, all the trouble. The doctors said I had been
getting better, but they didn't know. It was--Jim's comin' back.
He's took me home, and I've come for Amabel, and--he's got a job in
Lloyd's, and he's bought me this new hat and cape."  Eva flirted her
free arm, and a sweep of jetted silk gleamed, then she tossed her
head consciously to display a hat with a knot of pink roses. Then
she kissed Amabel again. "Mamma's come back," she whispered.

"Mamma, mamma!" cried Amabel.

Andrew and Fanny looked at each other.

"Where is he?" asked Andrew, in a slow, halting voice.

Eva glanced from one to the other defiantly. "He's outside, waitin'
in the road," said she; "but he ain't comin' in unless you treat him
just the same as ever. I've set my veto on that."  Eva's voice and
manner as she said that were so unmistakably her own that all
Fanny's doubt of her sanity vanished. She sobbed aloud.

"O God, I'm so thankful! She's come home, and she's all right! O
God, I'm so thankful!"

"What about Jim?" asked Eva, with her old, proud, defiant look.

"Of course he's comin' in," sobbed Fanny. "Andrew, you go--"

But Andrew had already gone, unlocking the parlor door on his way.
"It's your aunt Eva, Ellen," he said as he passed. "She's come home
cured, and your uncle Jim is out in the yard, and I'm goin' to call
him in. I guess you'd better go out and see her."

Chapter LX

Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly
begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the
cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in
full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city
was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the
well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and
golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside
the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old
houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the
first time that year a realization of the full presence of the
spring. All at once she knew the goddess to be there in her whole
glory.

"Spring has really come," she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled
a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the
sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of
sweetness, came in her face.

"Yes," said Abby; "it seems more like spring than it did last night,
somehow!"  Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her
cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a
sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also
looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked
with her arm through Ellen's.

Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, passed them, and Cynthia
Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a
window.

Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. "Say!" she said, "know
who that was?"

"We've got eyes," replied Abby Atkins, shortly.

"Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins;
I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just
heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's
that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin'
without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a
black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!"

Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the
better of her dislike. "Who did she marry?" said she, shortly. "I
suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the
travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about."

"I _thought_ you didn't know," replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of
triumph. "They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so
long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was
anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and
Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old
Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half
blind!"

Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment.

She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although
she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not
well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had
not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long
time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself
or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her
courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was
aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether
directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to
her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had
been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the glass, and
had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her
cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth,
and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal,
unanswerable question of humanity, "Where is my happiness?"

It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to
the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to
overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a
refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and
misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike
her full on the heart.

"Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard," Maria said
once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact
of a red flaming torch of spring. "What ails you, dear; don't you
like those flowers?" Maria said, anxiously.

"Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely," replied Ellen,
looking.

She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she
thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her,
and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide.
Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love
her--how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his
own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her
thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal
white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She
continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet,
nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm.
She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is
played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all
sense of the mechanism is lost.

"Well, Ellen Brewster," said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident
voice, "I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so
fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to
send him a weddin'-present--a spoon, or something."

"Shut up," said Abby Atkins; "Ellen has worried herself sick over
him as it is."  She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung
more closely to her.

"Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins," returned Sadie Peel. "He's got a
wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A
great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young
enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at
all!"

Sadie Peel sped on with her news to a group of girls ahead, and the
wheels of the carriage flashed out of sight in the spring sunlight.
It was quite true that Risley and Cynthia had been married that
morning. He had not entirely lost his vision, although it would
always be poor, and he would live happily, although in a measure
disappointedly, feeling that his partial helplessness was his chief
claim upon his wife's affection. He had gotten what he had longed
for for so many years, but by means which tended to his humiliation
instead of his pride. But Cynthia was radiant. In caring for her
half-blind husband she attained the spiritual mountain height of her
life. She possessed love in the one guise in which he appealed to
her, and she held him fast to the illumination of her very soul.

After the carriage had passed out of sight Abby came close on the
other side of Ellen and slid her arm through hers. "Say!" she began.

"What is it?" asked Ellen.

Abby blushed. "Oh, nothing much," she replied, in a tone unusual for
her. She took her arm away from Ellen's, and laughed a little
foolishly.

Ellen stared at her with grave wonder. She had not the least idea
what she meant.

Abby changed the subject. "Going to the park opening to-night,
Ellen?" she asked.

"No, I guess not."

"You'd better. Do go, Ellen."

"Yes, do go, Ellen; it will do you good," said Maria. She looked
into Ellen's face with the inexpressibly pure love of one innocent
girl for another.

The park was a large grove of oaks and birch-trees which had
recently been purchased by the street railway company of Rowe, and
it was to be used for the free entertainment of the people, with an
undercurrent of consideration for the financial profit of the
company.

"I'm afraid I can't go," said Ellen.

"Yes, you can; it will do you good; you look like a ghost this
morning," said Abby.

"Do go, Ellen," pleaded Maria.

However, Ellen would not have gone had it not been for a whisper of
Abby's as they came out of the factory that night.

"Look here, Ellen, you'd better go," said she, "just to show folks.
That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had
something on your mind, and was worrying about--well, you know
what--that made you look so."

Ellen flushed an angry red. "I'll stop for you and Maria to-night,"
she answered, quickly.

"All right," Abby replied, heartily; "we'll go on the eight-o'clock
car."

Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on
her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with
roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was
going, she started up.

"I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home," she said. "I
don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon
and said that she and Jim were going."

"I wonder where father is?" said Ellen, uneasily. "I don't know as I
ought to go till he comes home."

"Oh, stuff!" replied Fanny. "He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh,
here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?"
she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and
something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for
years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with
just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was
scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look
of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and
regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his
aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone.
She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened
as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. "Andrew Brewster,
what is it?" she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish
width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff.

Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of
roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not.

"For God's sake, what is it?" gasped Fanny.

Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. "That old mining-stock has come up," said
she, in a harsh voice. "He'd never ought to have bought it. I should
have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's
worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to
Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about
a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay
dividends, and for Andrew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought
this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but
it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough
trouble over it."

Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation
with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she
looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. "Lawyer Samson says it will
make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole," said
she. "I hope it will learn you a lesson."

Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish
smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked
at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of
joyful vacuity.

Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "You
'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster," said she; "come right
out and have something to eat."

Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked
at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind
him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him.

"If you _have_ got a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin'
like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster," said she. "Go out and eat
your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you.
There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the
bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned
out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just
let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your
supper, and don't be too set up over it."

Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that
expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They
had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had
one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly
understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been
straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold
its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that
accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own
bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its
loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of
money in the current coin of his own self-respect.

His mother shook him again, but rather gently. "Get up this minute,
and go out and eat your supper," said she; "and then I don't see why
you can't go with Fanny and me to the park opening. They say lots of
folks are goin', and there's goin' to be fireworks. It'll distract
your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck
any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's
most time for the car."

Andrew obeyed.

Chapter LXI

The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the
street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth
of oak and birch trees. With the light of the full moon, like a
broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights
filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more
effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been.

When the people streamed into it from the crowded electric-cars,
there were exclamations of rapture. Women and girls fairly shrieked
with delight. The ground, which had been entirely cleared of
undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the
tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches. The birches stood
together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the
rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the
moon. In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a
pavilion, and dancing was going on there. Many of the people outside
moved with dancing steps. Children in swings flew through the airs
with squeals of delight. There was a stand for the sale of ice-cream
and soda, and pretty girls blossomed like flowers behind the
counters. There were various rustic adornments, such as seats and
grottos, and at one end of the grove was a small collection of wild
animals in cages, and a little artificial pond with swans. Now and
then, above the chatter of the people and the music of the
orchestra, sounded the growl of a bear or the shrill screech of a
paroquet, and the people all stopped and listened and laughed. This
little titillation of the unusual in the midst of their sober walk
of life affected them like champagne. Most of them were of the
poorer and middle classes, the employés of the factories of Rowe.
They moved back and forth with dancing steps of exultation.

"My, ain't it beautiful!" Fanny said, squeezing Andrew's arm. He had
his wife on one arm, his mother on the other. For him the whole
scene appeared more than it really was, since it reflected the joy
of his own soul. There was for him a light greater than that of the
moon or electricity upon it--that extreme light of the world--the
happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the
hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that
happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy
tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him
those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on
earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in one
human soul.

Fanny, as they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her
own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate
with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the
hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old
head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant.

Ellen, with Abby and Maria, walked behind them.

Presently Andrew met another man who had also purchased stock in the
mine, and stopped to exchange congratulations. The man's face was
flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he had not. On his arm hung
his wife, a young woman with a showy red waist and some pink ribbon
bows on her hat. She was teetering a little in time to the music,
while a little girl clung to her skirts and teetered also.

"Well, old man," said the new-comer, with a hoarse sound in his
throat, "they needn't talk to us any more, need they?"

"That's so," replied Andrew, but his joy in prosperity was not like
the other man's. It placed him heights above him, although from the
same cause. Prosperity means one thing to one man, and another to
his brother.

Presently they met Jim Tenny and Eva and Amabel. They were walking
three abreast, Amabel in the middle. Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly
at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles.
Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance. "Well," said she, "so luck
has turned?"

Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of
silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic
trill of the orchestra. "I've had an ice-cream, and I'm going to
have a new doll and a doll-carriage," said she. "Oh, Ellen!"  She
left her father and mother for a second and clung to Ellen, kissing
her; then she was back.

"Well, Andrew?" said Jim. He had a shamed face, yet there was
something brave in it struggling for expression.

"Well, Jim?" said Andrew.

The two shook hands solemnly. Then they walked on together, and the
sisters behind, with Amabel clinging to her mother's hand. "Jim's
goin' to work if he _has_ had a little windfall," said Eva, proudly.
"Oh, Fanny, only think what it means!"

"I hope it will be a lesson to both of them," said Mrs. Zelotes,
stalking along after, but she smiled harshly.

"Oh, land, don't croak, if you've got a chance to laugh! There's few
enough chances in this world," cried Eva, with boisterous good
humor. "As for me, I've come out of deep waters, and I'm goin' to
take what comfort I can in the feel of the solid ground under my
feet."  She began to force Amabel into a dance in time with the
music, and the child shrieked with laughter.

"S'pose she's all right?" whispered Mrs. Zelotes to Fanny.

"Land, yes," replied Fanny; "it's just like her, just the way she
used to do. It makes me surer than anything else that she's cured."

The girls behind were loitering. Abby turned to Ellen and pointed to
a rustic seat under a clump of birches.

"Let's sit down there a minute, Ellen," said she.

"All right," replied Ellen. When she and Abby seated themselves,
Maria withdrew, standing aloof under an oak, looking up at the
illumined spread of branches with the rapt, innocent expression of a
saint.

"Why don't you come and sit down with us, Maria?" Ellen called.

"In a minute," replied Maria, in her weak, sweet voice. Then John
Sargent came up and joined her.

"She'll come in a minute," Abby said to Ellen. "She--she--knows I
want to tell you something."

Abby hesitated. Ellen regarded her with wonder.

"Look here, Ellen," said Abby; "I don't know what you're going to
think of me after all I've said, but--I'm going to get married to
Willy Jones. His mother has had a little money left her, and she
owns the house clear now, and I'm going to keep right on working;
and--I never thought I would, Ellen, you know; but I've come to
think lately that all you can get out of labor in this world is the
happiness it brings you, and--the love. That's more than the money,
and--he wants me pretty bad. I suppose you think I'm awful, Ellen
Brewster."  Abby spoke with triumph, yet with shame. She dug her
little toe into the shadow-mottled ground.

"Oh, Abby, I hope you'll be real happy," said Ellen. Then she choked
a little.

"I've made up my mind not to work for nothing," said Abby; "I've
made up my mind to get whatever work is worth in this world if I
can, and--to get it for him too."

"I hope you will be very happy," said Ellen again.

"There he is now," whispered Abby. She rose as Willy Jones
approached, laughing confusedly. "I've been telling Ellen Brewster,"
said Abby, with her perfunctory air.

Ellen held out her hand, and Willy Jones grasped it, then let it
drop and muttered something. He looked with helpless adoration at
Abby, who put her hand through his arm reassuringly.

"Let's go and see the animals," said she; "I haven't seen the
animals."

"I guess I'll go and see if I can find my father and mother,"