“For Christ’s living sake,” cried the man as his face glowed in his emotion, “let life wash in from its holy source to these our brothers. Shame on you–you greedy ones, you dollar worshipers–you dam the stream, you muddy the waters, you poison the well of life–shame–shame!” he cried and then paused, gloated perhaps in his pause, for the storm he saw gathering in the crowd, to break. His face was transfigured by the passion in his heart and seemed illumined with wrath.

“The flag–the flag!” bawled deaf John Kollander, rising, “He is desecrating Old Glory!”

Then fire met fire and the conflagration was past control. It raged over the church noisily.

“Look-a here, young man,” called Joseph Calvin, standing in his seat.

“The flag–will no one defend the flag!” bellowed John Kollander, while Rhoda, his wife, looked on with amiable approval.

“P-put him out,” stuttered Kyle Perry, and his clerks and understrappers joined the clamor.

“Well, say, men,” cried George Brotherton in the confusion of hissing and groaning, “can’t you let the man talk? Is free speech dead in this town?” His great voice silenced the crowd, and John Dexter was in the pulpit holding out his hands. As he spoke the congregation grew silent, and they heard him say:

“This is a free pulpit; this man shall not be disturbed.” But Joseph Calvin stamped noisily out of the church. John Kollander and his wife marched out behind him with military tread and Kyle Perry and Ahab Wright with their families followed, amid a shuffling of feet and a clamor of voices. The men from South Harvey kept their places. There was a whispering among them and Grant, fearing that they would start trouble, called to them sternly:

When Market Street was gone, the speaker drew a deep breath and said in a low, quiet voice charged with pent-up emotion: “Now that we are alone, friends,–now that they are gone whose hearts needed this message, let me say just this: God has given you who live beautiful lives the keeping of his treasure. Let us ask ourselves this: Shall we keep it to share it with our brethren in love, or shall we guard it against our brethren in hate?”

He walked back to the rear of the room and sat, with his head bowed down, beside his friends, spent and weary while the services closed.

As he walked, he was continually coming upon lovers passing or meeting him in the night; and Grant seeing them felt his sense of isolation from life renewed, but was not stirred to change his course. For hours he wandered through the town and out of it into the prairies, with his heart heavy and wroth at the iniquities of men which make the inequities of life. For his demon kept him from sleep. If another demon, and perhaps a gentler, tried to whisper to him that night of another life and a sweeter, tried to turn him from his course into the normal walks of man, tried to break his purpose and tempt him to dwell in the comely tents of Kedar–if some gentler angels that would have saved him from a harsher fate had beckoned to him and called him that night, through passing lovers’ arms and the murmur of loving voices, his eyes were blind and his ears were deaf and his heart was hot with another passion.

Amos Adams was in bed when Grant came into the house. On the table was a litter of writing paper. Grant sat down for a minute under the lamp. His father in the next room stirred, and asked:

“What kept you?” And then, “I had a terrific time with Mr. Left to-night.” The father appeared in the doorway. “But just look there what I got after a long session.”

On the page were these words written in a little round, old-fashioned hand, some one’s interminably repeated prayer. “Angels guide him–angels strengthen him; angels pray for him.” These words were penned clear across the page and on the next line and the next and the next to the very bottom of the page, in a weary monotony, save that at the bottom of the sheet the pen had literally run into the paper, so heavily was the hand of the writer bearing down! Under that, written in the fine hand used by Mr. Left was this:

“Now, for instance, on a clothes wringer,” the Captain was saying: “It’s a perfect wonder on a clothes wringer: I have the agency of a clothes wringer that is making agents rich all over the country. But women don’t like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All right–hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced three-fifths and a day’s wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl could play The Maiden’s Prayer on a piano–eh? Or, say, put it on a churn–same Horse–one’s all that’s needed to a house. Or make it an ice cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that runs by a crank–and ’y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold Laura one–traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at the Doctor’s is like Sunday now–what say? Lila’s so crazy about it they can’t keep her out of the basement while the woman works,–likes to dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll clothes, what say?”

As the Judge looked idly at the Captain’s treasures while the Captain tinkered with the steel, he took off his hat, and the Captain, peering through his glasses, remarked:

“Getting kind of thin on top, Tom–eh? Doc, he’s leaning a little hard on his cane. Joe Calvin, he’s getting rheumatic, and you’re getting thin-haired. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

“So you believe the Lord runs things here in Harvey, do you, Cap?” asked the Judge, who was playing with a bit of wire.

“Well–I suppose if you come right down to it,” answered the Captain, “a man’s got to have the consolation of religion in some shape or other or he’s going to get mighty discouraged–what say?”

“Why,” scoffed the Judge, “it’s a myth–there’s nothing to it. Look at my wife–I mean Margaret–she changes religion as often as she changes dogs. Since we’ve been married she’s had three religions. And what good does it do her?”

The Captain, sighting down the edge of the metal, shook his head, and the Judge went on: “What good does any religion do? I’ve broken the ten commandments, every one of them–and I get on. No one bothers me, because I keep inside the general statutes. I’ve beat God at his own game. I tell you, Cap, you can do what you please just so you obey the state and federal laws and pay your debts. This God-myth amuses me.”

Captain Morton did not care to argue with the Judge. So he said, by way of making conversation for a customer, and neighbor and guest:

“Yes–that Adams is another one of your canting, God-and-morality fellows. Always watch that kind. I tell you, Captain,” barked the Judge, “about the only thing my wife and I have agreed on for a year is that this Adams fellow is a sneaking, pharisaical hound. Lord, how she hates him! Sometimes I think women hate hard enough to compete with your God, who according to the preachers, is always slipping around getting even with fellows for their sins. God and women are very much alike, anyway,” sneered the Judge. In the silence that followed, both men were attracted by a noise behind them–the rustling of straw. They looked around and saw the figure of a little girl–a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, shy, little girl, trying to slip out of the place. She had evidently been in the loft gathering eggs, for her apron was full, and she had her foot on the loft ladder.

“Why, Lila, child,” exclaimed the Captain, “I clean forgot you being up there–did you find any eggs? Why didn’t you come down long ago?”

“Come here, Lila,” called the Judge. The child stood by the ladder hesitatingly, holding her little apron corners tightly in her teeth basketing the eggs–too embarrassed now that she was down the ladder, to use her hands.

“Lila,” coaxed the Judge, reaching his hand into his pocket, “won’t you let Papa give you a dollar for candy or something. Come on, daughter.” He put out his hands. She shook her head. She had to pass him to get to the door. “You aren’t afraid of your Papa are you, Lila–come–here’s a dollar for you–that’s a good girl.”

Her mouth quivered. Big tears were dropping down her cheeks. The Captain’s quick eye saw that something had hurt her. He went over to her, put his arm about her, took the eggs from her apron, fondled her gently without speaking. The Judge drew nearer “Lila–come–that’s a good girl–here, take the money. Oh Lila, Lila,” he cried, “won’t you take it for Papa–won’t you, my little girl?”

“Shy child, Judge–very shy. Emma let her gather the eggs this morning, she loves to hunt eggs,” chuckled the Captain, “and she went to the loft just before you came in. I clean forgot she hadn’t come down.”

The Captain went on with his work.

“I suppose, Cap,” said Van Dorn quietly, “she heard more or less of what I said.” The Captain nodded.

“How much did she understand?” the Judge asked.

“More’n you’d think, Judge–more’n you’d think. But,” added Captain Morton after a pause, “I know the little skite like a top, Judge–and there’s one thing about her: She’s a loyal little body. She’ll never tell; you needn’t be worrying about that.”

The Judge sighed and added sadly: “It wasn’t that, Cap–it was–” But the Judge left his sentence in the air. The mending was done. The Judge paid the old man and gave him a dollar more than he asked, and went chugging off in a cloud of smoke, while the Captain, thinking over what the Judge had said, sighed, shook his head, and bending over his work, cackled in an undertone, snatches of a tune that told of a land that is fairer than day. He had put together three sprockets and was working on the fourth when he looked up and saw his daughter Emma sitting on the box that the Judge had vacated. The Captain put his hand to his back and stood up, looking at his eldest daughter with loving pride.

“Emma,” he said at length, “Judge Tom says women are like God.” He stood near her and smoothed her hair, and patted her cheek as he pressed her head against his side. “I guess he’s right–eh? Lila was in the loft getting eggs and she overheard a lot of his fool talk.” The daughter made no reply. The Captain worked on and finally said: “It kind of hit Tom hard to have Lila hear him; took the tuck out of him, eh?”

“Well, Father, I agree with you in general about women but in particular I don’t care about Mrs. Herdicker and I wish Martha had another job, though I suppose it’s better than teaching school.” The daughter sighed. “Honest, father, sometimes when I’ve been on my feet all day, and the children have been mean, and the janitor sticks his head in and grins, so I’ll know the superintendent is in the building and get the work off the board that the rules don’t allow me to put on, or one of the other girls sends a note up to watch for my spelling for he’s cranky on spelling to-day, I just think, ‘Lordee, if I had a job in some one’s kitchen, I’d be too happy to breathe.’ But then–”

“Yes–yes, child–I know it’s hard work now–but ’y gory, Emmy, when I get this sprocket introduced and going, I’ll buy you six superintendents in a brass cage and let you feed ’em biled eggs to make ’em sing–eh?” He smiled and patted his daughter’s hair and rose to go back to work. The girl plucked at his coat and said: “Now sit down, father, I want to talk to you,” she hesitated. “It’s about Mr. Brotherton. You know he’s been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me, and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me–” she stopped. Her father looked at her in astonishment. “Why, father,” she went on,–“why not? I’m twenty-five, and Martha’s twenty-two and even Ruth is seventeen–he might even be coming to see Ruth,” she added bitterly.

“Yes, or Epaminondas–the cat–eh?” cut in the old man. Then he added, indignantly, “Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams–who’s he coming to see? Or Amos–he comes around here sometimes Saturday night after G. A. R. meeting, with me–what say? Would you want us all to clear out and leave you the front room with him?” demanded the perturbed Captain.

As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold.

“Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk,” shrilled the Doctor before the Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: “Surely–come right in, I’m kind of lonesome anyhow.”

“And I’m mad,” cried the Doctor. “Just let me sit here and blow off a little to my old army friend.”

“Well–well, Doctor, it’s queer to see you hot under the collar–eh?” The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking. The Captain asked: “What’s gone wrong? Politics ain’t biling? what say?”

The Captain interrupted:

“I saw Violet Hogan and the children–dressed like princesses, walking out to-day–past the Judge’s house–showing it to them–what say? My, how old she looks, Doctor!”

“Well–the damned villain–the infernal scoundrel–” piped the Doctor. “I just been reading that decision. The men showed in their lawsuit that the month before the law took effect the company, knowing the law had been passed, went out and sold their switch and sold the slag dump, to a fake railroad company that bought a switch engine and two or three cars, and incorporated as a railroad, and then–the same people owning the smelter and the railroad, they set all the men in the smelter that they could working on the slag dump, so the men were working for the railroad and not for the smelter company and didn’t come within the eight hour law. And now the Judge stands by that farce; he says that the men working there under the very chimney of the smelter on the slag dump where the fumes are worst, are not subject to the law because the law says that men working for the smelters shall not work more than eight hours, and these men are working for a cheating, swindling subterfuge of a railroad. That’s judge-made law. That’s the kind of law that makes anarchists. Law!” snorted the Doctor, “Law!–made by judges who have graduated out of the employ of corporations–law!–is just what the Judge on the bench dares to read into the statute. I tell you, Cap, if the doctors and engineers and preachers were as subservient to greed and big money as the lawyers are, we would soon lose our standing. But when a lawyer commits some flagrant malpractice like that of Tom Van Dorn’s–the lawyers remind us that the courts are sacred institutions.”

The Doctor’s pipe was out and in filling it again, he jabbed viciously at the bowl with his knife, and in the meantime the Captain was saying:

“The body of the law–yes, damn ’em, I’ve bought ’em to find the body of the law myself.”

The Doctor sputtered along with his pipe and cried out in his high treble–“I never had any more trouble buying a court than a Senator. And lawyers have no shame about hiring themselves to crooks and notorious lawbreakers. And some lawyers hire themselves body and soul to great corporations for life and we all know that those corporations are merely evading the laws and not obeying them; and lawyers–at the very top of the profession–brazenly hire out for life to that kind of business. What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors–but we call them quacks. We don’t allow ’em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public–they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we’re coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack–a hair-splitting, owl-eyed, venal quack–who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in his quackery. Justice demands that he take that fake corporation, made solely to evade the law, and shake its guts out and tell the men who put up this job, that he’ll put them all in jail for contempt of court if they try any such shenanigan in his jurisdiction again. That would be justice. This–this decision–is humbug and every one knows it. What’s more–it may be murder. For men can’t work on that slag dump ten hours a day without losing their lives.”

The captain tapped away at his sprocket. He had his own ideas about the sanctity of the courts. They were not to be overthrown so easily. The Doctor snorted: “Burn their bodies, and blear their minds, and then wail about our vicious lower classes–I’m getting to be an anarchist.”

The Captain looked around and smiled and the Doctor asked: “What was that you were saying about Violet Hogan?”

“I said I saw her to-day and she looked faded and old–she’s not so much older than my Emma–eh?”

“Still,” said the Doctor, “Violet’s had a tough time–a mighty tough time; three children in six years. The last one took most of her teeth; young horse doctor gave her some dope that about killed her; she’s done all the cooking, washing, scrubbing and made garden for the family in that time–up every morning at five, seven days in the week to get breakfast for Dennis–Emma would look broken if she’d had that.” The Doctor paused. “Like her mother–weak–vain–puts all of Denny’s wages on the children’s backs–Laura says Violet spends more on frills for those kids than we spend for groceries–and Violet goes around herself looking like the Devil before breakfast.” The Doctor rested his chin on his cane. “Remember her mother–Mrs. Mauling–funny how it breeds that way. The human critter, Cap, is a curious beast–but he does breed true–mostly.” The Doctor loafed, whistling, around the work shop, prodding at things with his cane, and wound up leaning against one end of the bench.

The Doctor was serious. His high voice was calm, and he smoked a while in peace. “But,” he added reflectively–“Cap, I want to tell you something more wonderful than all; I’ve seen seven absolutely honest men elected this year to the State Senate–I’ve sounded them, felt them out, had all kinds of reports from all kinds of people on those seven men. Each man thinks he’s alone, and there are seven.”

The Doctor leaned over to the Captain and said confidentially, “Cap–we meet next week. Listen here. I was elected without a dollar of the old spider’s money. He fought me for that smelter law on the quiet. Now look here; you watch my smoke. I’m going to organize those seven, and make eight and you’re going to see some fighting.”

“You ain’t going to fight the party, are you, Doc?” asked the amazed Captain, as though he feared that the Doctor would fall dead if he answered yes. But the Doctor grinned and said: “Maybe–if it fights me.”

“Well, Doc–” cried the Captain, “don’t you think–”

“You bet I think–that’s what’s the matter. The smelter lawsuit’s made me think. They want to control government so they can have a license to murder. That’s what it means. Watch ’em blight Denny Hogan’s lungs down on the dump; watch ’em burn ’em up and crush ’em in the mines–by evading the mining laws; watch ’em slaughter ’em on the railroads; murder is cheap in this country–if you control government and get a slaughter license.”

The Doctor laughed. “That’s the old century–and say, Cap–I’m with the new. You know old Browning–he says:

The Doctor waved his cane furiously, and grinned as he threw back his head, laughed silently, kicked out one leg, and stood with one eye cocked, looking at the speechless Captain. “Well, Cap–speak up–what are you going to do about it?”

And with that, the Doctor went out into the alley and through his alley gate into his house. But the Captain’s mind was set going by the Doctor’s parting words. He was considering what might follow the invention of Tom Van Dorn’s automobile. There was that chain, and there was his sprocket. It would work–he knew it would work and save much power and much noise. But the sprocket must be longer, and stronger. Then, he thought, if the wire spokes and the ball-bearing and rubber tires of the bicycle had made the automobile possible, and now that they were getting the gasoline engine of the automobile perfected so that it would generate such vast power in such a small space–what if they could conserve and apply that power through his invention–what if the gasoline engine might not through his Household Horse some day generate and use a power that would lift a man off the earth? What then? As he tapped the bolts and turned the screws and put his little device together, he dreamed big dreams of the future when men should fly, and the boundaries of nations would disappear and tariffs would be impossible. This shocked him, and he tried to figure out how to prevent smuggling by flying machines; but as he could not, he dreamed on about the time when war would be abolished among civilized men, because of his invention.

So the old settlers sometimes were fooled by his attitude toward Margaret, his wife. He bore toward her in public that shallow polish of attention, which puzzled those who knew that they were never together by themselves when he could help it, that he spent his evenings at the City Club, and that often at the theater they sat almost back to back unconsciously during the whole performance. But after the curtain was down, the polite husband was the soul of attendance upon the beautiful wife–her coat, her opera glasses, her trappings of various sorts flew in and out of his eager hands as though he were a conjurer playing with them for an audience. For he was a proud man, and she was a vain woman, and they were striving to prove to a disapproving world that the bargain they had made was a good one.

But whatever the Judge’s views were on the chess game of the cosmos, Margaret, his wife, had no desire to beat God at his own game. She was a seeker, who always was looking for a new God. God after God had passed in weary review before her. She was always ready to tune up with the infinite, and to ignore the past–a most comfortable thing to do under the circumstances.

As she turned into Market Street one February morning of the New Year in the New Century, leading her dachshund, she was revolving a deep problem in her head. She was trying to get enough faith to believe that her complexion did not need a renovation. She knew that the skin-thought she kept holding was earth-bound and she had tried to shake it, but it wouldn’t shake. She had progressed far enough in the moment’s cult to overcome a food-thought when her stomach hurt her, by playing a stiff game of bridge for a little stake. But the skin-thought was with her, and she was nervous and irritable and upon the verge of tears for nothing at all. Moreover, her dog kept pulling at his leash, so altogether her cup was running over and she went into Mr. Brotherton’s store to ask him to try to find an English translation of a highly improper German book with a pious title about which she had heard from a woman from Chicago who had been visiting her.

For Mr. Brotherton’s commercial spirit could not permit him to withhold the fact that he had enlarged his business by adding such household necessities as wall paper and such business necessities as stationery and office supplies. Thus the town referred ever after to Mr. Brotherton’s “Sweet serenity of Books and Wallpaper,” and so it was known of men in Harvey.

When Mrs. Van Dorn entered, she was surprised; for while she had heard casually of the changes in Mr. Brotherton’s establishment, she was not prepared for the effulgence of refined and suppressed grandeur that greeted her.

Mr. Brotherton, in a three buttoned frock coat, a rich black ascot tie and suitable gray trousers, came forward to meet her.

“Ah, George,” she exclaimed in her baby voice, “really what a lit-ry,” that also was from her Chicago friend, “what a lit-ry atmosphere you have given us.”

And Mr. Brotherton was sure he would too, and indicated as much, for as he had often said to Mr. Fenn in their literary confidences, “Emerson is one of my best moving lines.” And Mrs. Van Dorn continued confidentially: “Now there’s a book, a German book–aren’t those Germans candid–you know I’m of German extraction, and I tell the Judge that’s where I get my candor. Well, there’s a German book–I can’t pronounce it, so I’ve written it out–there; will you kindly order it?” Mr. Brotherton took the slip and went to the back of the store to make a memorandum of the order. He left the book counter in charge of Miss Calvin–Miss Ave Calvin–yes, Miss Ave Maria Calvin, if you must know her full name, which she is properly ashamed of. But it pleased her mother twenty years before and as Mr. Calvin was glad to get into the house on any terms when the baby was named, it went Ave Maria Calvin, and Ave Maria Calvin stood behind the counter reading the Bookman and trying to remember the names of the six best sellers so that she could order them for stock.

Mrs. Van Dorn, who kept Mrs. Calvin’s one card conspicuously displayed in her silver card case in the front hall, saw an opportunity to make a little social hay, so she addressed Miss Calvin graciously: “Good morning, Ave–how is your dear mother? What a charming effect Mr. Brotherton has produced!” Then Mrs. Van Dorn dropped the carefully modulated voice a trifle lower: “When the book comes that I just ordered, kindly slip it to one side; I wouldn’t have Mr. Brotherton–he might misunderstand. But you can read it if you wish–take it home over night. It’s very broadening.”

Mr. Brotherton confessed for the world and Mrs. Van Dorn shook her over-curled head sadly. She made some other talk with Mr. Brotherton which he paraphrased later for Henry Fenn and when Mrs. Van Dorn went out, Mr. Brotherton left the door open to rid the room of the scent of attar of roses and said to Miss Calvin:

“Well, s–,” but checked himself and went on in his new character of custodian of “The Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper,” but he added as a compromise:

“‘And for bonnie Annie Laurie’ I certainly would make a quick get-away!”

Mr. Brotherton’s memory went back ten years, and recalled the two girls together–Violet and Margaret. Both were light-headed and vain; so far as their relations with Van Dorn were concerned, one was as blamable as the other. Yet one had prospered and the other had not–and the one who had apparently suffered most had upon the whole lived the cleaner, more normal life–and Mr. Brotherton drummed his penholder upon the black desk before him and questioned the justice of life.

But, indeed, if we must judge life’s awards and benefits from the material side there is no justice in life. If there was any difference between the two women whom Tom Van Dorn had wronged–difference in rewards or punishments, it must have been in their hearts. It is possible that in her life of motherhood and wifehood, in the sacrifices that broke her body and scarred her face, Violet Mauling may have been compensated by the love she bore the children upon whom she lavished her life. For she had that love, and she did squander–in blind vain folly–the strength of her body, afterwards the price of her soul–upon her children. As for Margaret Van Dorn–Mr. Brotherton was no philosopher. He could not pity her. Yet she too had given all. She had given her mind–and it was gone. She had given her heart and it was gone also, and she had given that elusive blending of the heart and mind we call her soul–and that was gone, too. Mr. Brotherton could see that they were gone–all gone. But he could not see that her loss was greater than Violet’s.

“Indeed she will, George Brotherton–that she will. Many’s the night she’s talked me to sleep of them golden days of her splendor–indeed she will.”

They walked on together and Hogan said: “Well–I turn at the next crossin’. I’m goin’ home and I’m glad of it. Up in the mornin’ at five; off on the six-ten train, climbin’ the slag dump at seven, workin’ till six, home on the six-fifteen train, into the house at seven; to bed at ten, up at five, eat and work and sleep–sleep and eat and work, fightin’ the dump by day and fightin’ the fumes in me chist by night–all for a dollar and sixty a day; and if we jine a union, we get canned, and if we would seek dissipation, we’re invited to go down to the Company hall and listen to Tommy Van Dorn norate upon what he calls the ‘de-hig-nity of luh-ay-bor.’ Damn sight of dignity labor has, lopin’ three laps ahead of the garnishee from one year’s end to the other.”

He laughed a good-natured, creaking laugh, and said as he waved his hand to part with Mr. Brotherton–“Well, annyhow, the good woman will thank you for the extra readin’; not that she has time to read it, God knows, but it gives the place a tone when Laura Nesbit drops in for a bit of a word of help about the makin’ of the little white things she’s doin’ for the Polish family on ‘D’ Street these days.” In another minute Brotherton heard the car moaning at the curve, and saw Hogan get in. It was nearly midnight when Hogan got to sleep; for the papers that Brotherton sent brought back “the grandeur that was Greece,” and he had to hear how Mr. Van Dorn had made Mr. Brotherton mayor and how they had both made Dr. Nesbit Senator, and how ungrateful the Doctor was to turn against the hand that fed him, and many other incidents and tales that pointed to the renown of the unimpeachable Judge, who for seven years had reigned in the humble house of Hogan as a first-rate god.

“Hogan,” called the dump-boss, “go down to the powder house and bring up a box of persuaders.”

The slag was hard and needed blasting. Hogan looked up, said “What?” and before the dump boss could speak again Hogan had started down and around the dump to the powder house, near the saloon. He went into the powder house, and then came out, carrying a heavy box. At the sidewalk edge, Hogan, who was yawning, stumbled–they saw him stumble, two men standing in the door of the Hot Dog saloon a block away, and they told the people at the inquest that that was the last they saw. A great explosion followed. The men about the dump huddled for a long minute under freight cars, then crawled out, and the dump boss called the roll; Hogan was missing. In an hour they came and took Mrs. Hogan to the undertaker’s room near the smelter–where so many women had stood beside death in its most awful forms. She had her baby in her arms, with another plucking at her skirts and she stood mutely beside the coffin that they would not open. For she knew what other women knew about the smelter, knew that when they will not open the coffin, it must not be opened. So the little procession rode to the Hogan home, where Laura Van Dorn was waiting. Perhaps it was because she could not see the face of the dead that it seemed unreal to the widow. But she did not moan nor cry–after the first scream that came when she knew the worst. Stolidly she went through her tasks until after the funeral.

Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing for years: “Mrs. Van Dorn, I’m going to do something you won’t like.” To Laura’s questioning eyes Violet answered: “I know your ma, or some one else has told you all about me–but,” she shut her mouth tightly and said slowly:

So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off, Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge’s office. She would have told him her story–but he interrupted: “Yes, Violet–I read it in the Times. But what can I do–you know I’m not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the railroad, and you know, Violet, he assumed the risk. What do they offer you?”

“Judge–for God’s sake don’t talk that way to me. That’s the way you used to talk to those miners’ wives–ugh!” she cried. “I remember it all–that assumed risk. Only this–he was working ten hours a day on a job that wouldn’t let him sleep, and he oughtn’t to be working but eight hours, if they hadn’t sneaked under the law. They’ve offered me five hundred, Judge–five hundred–for a man, five hundred for our three children–and me. You can make them do better–oh, I know you can. Oh, please for the sake–oh!”

She looked at him with her battered face, and as her mouth quivered, she tried to hide her broken teeth. He saw she was about to give way to tears. He dreaded a scene. He looked at her impatiently and finally gripping himself after a decision, he said:

“Now, Violet, take a brace. Five hundred is what they always give in these cases.” He smiled suavely at her and she noticed for the first time that his lip was bare and started at the cruel mouth that leered at her.