They had been undersold, in the same line of goods, with quite a large customer. Winston was rather blue about it at first, then laughed it off as one of the fluctuations of trade. To his great surprise, six months after, he received the largest order for goods that had yet been sent.

"We have been much deceived in the quality of cloths from Yates, Collins, & Co.," ran the note. "They do not stand wear, though they resemble yours so closely. Our customers have made numerous complaints, and desire the old stock, which we are glad to order again.

"MILES, CHAMBERS, & CO."

This was put up on the bulletin-board, and discussed with much pride at the club. Every man had an interest in it, and an ambition to excel in his particular branch. It paid in the long-run to be honest; and, though there might be a higher principle than remuneration, that was not a bad test, after all.

So the third summer opened brilliantly. Yardley, Gilman, and four others drew up an agreement for a co-operative store. They hired one man who had been a very successful buyer for a large grocery-firm, which had failed, and took with it his small invested capital. He was to keep the books, take orders, and do the buying, subject to the advisement of the managers. A certain low per cent of profits was agreed upon, just enough, they calculated, to pay expenses; and the goods were to be offered as low as possible for cash. The superior quality and reduced price, they decided, would be more agreeable to most of the men than a small balance at the end of the year. An account was to be kept with every member, and the agreement to remain in force one year from date.

And yet there are shoals and quicksands for prosperity, as well as yawning abysses for adversity. There were people in Yerbury—not bad souls either—who were not content to allow the world to revolve on any axis but their own. They could see their neighbors' planets go to destruction with equanimity—following some law of nature or ethics that regulated supply and demand of any force, in their estimation; but when some bright particular star flashed out of the orbit they had set for it, of course it was beyond the pale of safety. There has always been a great deal of just such obstinacy in the world, just such narrow prescribing, and yet—"it does move."

One of the favorite objections of these wiseacres was, that Hope Mills was founded on a wrong basis. Who knew just exactly what amount of goods Winston sold? Well, there was the amount manufactured,—the amount on hand every six months. True,—with a disbelieving shake of the head,—but he was up in the ways of the world; and what would hinder him, Ananias-like, from keeping back part of the price? When this was shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'etat Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes in an out-and-out way; but there was going to be a profound mystery about this—the most simple and above-board management, when every man knew, every six months, the best and the worst of the details.

Employment was becoming more general all through the country. Everybody drew a long breath, and decided that the grinding times of depression had passed. We would soon be back to the brilliant era of past prosperity.

And then there arose a new light in the labor horizon, a prophet who had discovered the magic key to the workingmen's paradise, and it had only to be turned by themselves, to gain entrance. Wherever he went, he was hailed with acclamation.

It was the old, old war upon capital, the old seductive science of equalizing things, values, money. Every poor man in the country had a better right to a cottage and garden and a few hours of leisure, than these few magnates to grasp every thing in their own hands, to roll in luxury, to feast in magnificence, to clothe their daughters in silks, velvets, and diamonds—it was to be noted that Mr. McPherson wore an immense diamond, but it was to be presumed that his wife or daughter did not. Everywhere one could see the rich growing richer, the poor poorer, the workman trodden down, brought to the level of slavery with his long hours and scanty wages. Where was it to end but in a nation of paupers, of thieves, of criminals of every grade? for, when you made a brute of a man, there came a time when he turned a brute's hand against you. This had been the underlying cause of all the world's great struggles: it had uncrowned kings, it had razed thrones, it had swept states. There were bits of distorted historical facts, fallacious but brilliant reasoning, and much bombast.

They heard of him in this city and that, and there was a great deal said about the cordiality with which he greeted "the horny-handed son of toil." No town was so small that he disdained it, no city so great that he feared it. There had been "demonstrations," but he seemed proud of his defiance of danger.

Men who could not altogether approve of him admitted that he was "smart," that he uttered a good many truths, half-truths they were, dressed up in specious falsehoods, all the more dangerous, since the world does pay homage to virtue and truth. They were troublesome questions: the great difficulty was the haste made in settling them. A balance will finally adjust itself, though there may be many vibrations at first.

It was a fact much to be regretted, that with returning prosperity the gin-mills and beer-shops of Yerbury had, as a general thing, increased in their business. A notable instance to the contrary, however, was Keppler's saloon. It had depended a good deal on the men from Hope Mills and the iron-works. The latter had been closed so long; and, although the coffee-house did not seem much of a rival at first, it had gone on steadily, and given the men time to think. It was not simply the one glass of beer they took to wash down their midday lunch, but the treating when a crowd gathered, the many drinks during a heated discussion of an evening. Not half a dozen of the mill-hands went there now, so occupied had their minds become with other matters. Keppler's lease was not out, and his rent was high for the times; he had lost money and customers, and felt sore over it; he had a grudge against Jack Darcy as the exponent of a system that interfered with his profits.

McPherson was discussed over pipes and ale one warm June evening, with brains cleared, of course, by frequent potations and stifling smoke. It was proposed that he should be invited to lecture at Yerbury.

"I like to see fair play!" cried Keppler. "These fellows over here"—nodding toward the mill—"have had it all their own way because they took up a lot of starving men in dull times. That was all well enough,—praise-worthy—praise-w-o-r-thy," with a long accent. "But things have changed now,—changed!" with a confident nod. "I'd like to hear what the man has to say. You see, he has come up from the ranks, he has been poor himself!"

So the ball was put in motion. McPherson's speech at Millville, a great laboring-centre, was read aloud with frequent cheering. And the laboring-men at Yerbury began to wonder why wages were not higher, when so many shops were running on full time! Somebody was making a great deal of money: they could barely live. Bread and meat had not fallen in the ratio of wages. It was still next door to starvation.

Finally some self-constituted labor-committee sent the letter of invitation, and received a cordial and flattering reply. Mr. McPherson had heard of Yerbury. He would be only too glad to come among them in his humble capacity, and shed what light he could upon the side of right and truth; raise his voice for the oppressed against the oppressor. And he mentioned that open-air meetings were generally more successful.

They put up a platform on the Common, the largest park in Yerbury. The day was very fine, not too hot, and a shower the evening before had laid the dust. At precisely four, a deputation awaited Mr. McPherson and his party at the station, escorted them to the Bedell House to refresh, and then to the grand hall of nature, with its waving arches of glistening green overhead.

Already a great concourse had assembled. Mr. McPherson mounted his rostrum, and, after a few preliminary flourishes, began in a clear, strong tone, that had the power of concentrating the attention of his audience. He went back centuries, and proved that from the very beginning of all industries there had been the desire to oppress, that the working-classes had to combine and fight for every advantage gained, to wrest from kings, peers, masters, even equals, the privileges they held to-day. Plainly, capital was a tyrant fattening on unpaid toil. "Were not the rich always in the ranks of capital, always against the poor man? They squeezed him to the utmost when they had need, then they flung him away. Did it matter to them if his wife and children starved? If he stole a loaf of bread to appease the pangs of hunger, he was sent to prison; but if a bank president stole half a million, he went to—Europe! [Laughter and applause.] Does the capitalist employ the laborer in order that there shall be fewer starving men in the country? It comes in the market, and buys at the lowest price, solely for its own benefit. It does not concern capital, whether this man can support wife and children on such a pittance: what business has he with wife and children! If the man drops at the work-bench, the victim of long hours, exhaustive toil, insufficient food, the town will thrust him into a pauper's grave, and another will fill his place. Even negro-slavery was more noble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute, strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its rights; it was half-starved that it might be weak; it was driven from pillar to post with a more cruel than slave-driver's whip, that it might never be able to perfect a successful organization."

And so on and on. The crowd increased. The six-o'clock bells rang, and the procession from shops wended their way thither, many from curiosity, some from a hope of a new truth, and not a few filled with a secret sense of wrong and dissatisfaction. Mr. McPherson was still belaboring capital. Now he had declared it "a stupendous fraud, a hollow bubble, a reputation for wealth where no wealth existed, a fictitious claim for what was not, but which still managed to hold the workman in its iron grasp; the concentrated labor of the men, not the lawful working interest of money. Some way this system of evil was going to be uprooted by men standing firm, refusing the wages of sweat and blood; and in the general overturn by legislation of state and country, every man was to have a farm or a factory, to quit work in the middle of the afternoon, and sit with folded hands on his own door-step, his own master, a free man!" [Great shouting and applause.]

He talked until seven, and wound up at last with a desperate but covert onslaught on Hope Mills. "No two men or six men, or company of any kind, had a right to band together to starve not only the men in their own town, but the laborers throughout the world, by so reducing wages for their own sole benefit; and every workman who submitted to have these chains forged around body and soul, no matter by what specious expedient, was a worse traitor, a more cruel oppressor of wife and children, than the red-handed capital that stood ready to make him a slave!"

There was an immense deal of cheering and applause. Mr. McPherson was invited to supper at the Bedell House by a deputation of working-men, though I think there were few horny-handed ones among them. Liquors flowed freely, and the feast was rather noisy. A purse was handed to him when he went away—he was too noble to make any charge when he spoke in behalf of a cause so near his heart.

The seed was sown, and it is too true that "foul weeds grow apace." There were club-meetings and union-meetings. The shoe-factory, which had struggled hard to get on its legs again, soon became a hotbed of discontent. The hatters held meetings, the paper-makers were aroused, and then began preparation for another grand strike. The weavers from Coldbridge and Stilford sent over a deputation to Hope Mills, warning, exhorting, and threatening. "No system," said they, "should interfere with mutual strength and protection."

And this was not all. It seemed as if Yerbury meant to make them the scape-goat of every thing. Robert Winston was broadly caricatured; and there was a bit of insulting abuse, calling them traders in their brethren's blood, pasted up on the gate-post. "The Evening Transcript" went over the system of co-operation, and showed to its own satisfaction, that it was a system full of errors and miscalculations based on the credulity of workmen. It hinted that the same mysterious cause which reduced profits last year would reduce them again next year, that at the end of the five years the bread and cheese would come out just even, although there had been a great deal more bread than cheese, as everybody knew. If the corporation were working for the best interests of the men, why had they not sold off stock when every one knew prices were going permanently down, instead of waiting to sell it below cost? Why had they paid exorbitant prices for wool when the market was flooded with it? Why had they not done this or that? until one wondered why, understanding the woollen-business so well, and being able to see just where enormous profits could be made, and losses avoided, they had not all gone into it themselves. The article wound up with a covert and insulting insinuation. Human nature was the same, the world over. Men of the highest probity and honor had succumbed to temptation: these men who had never really been in any responsible position had yet to be proved. If men like David Lawrence and Horace Eastman could not make a stand against fluctuations and difficulties, it was hardly likely success would crown any such abnormal undertaking.

Jack did not see the paper until the next day. Some one laid it surreptitiously on his desk. His face flushed darkly at the attack upon his honesty, and for a moment all the belligerency of his boyhood rose to the surface. He had half a mind to hunt up the writer of the article, and pound him to a jelly with his two fists. But presently he laughed to himself, and then made a tour of the mills in his cheeriest fashion. He saw with grief that the seed had found root. There were some sullen faces and short answers.

It certainly is a hard thing to keep on fighting an old foe that can only be beaten, never killed.

Jack stumbled over Cameron in the store-room.

"Cameron," said he with a white, rigid face, "I wish to God this was the last day of the five years! I should walk out of Hope Mills, and never set foot in it again, no, not even if they implored me on their knees. A thankless, miserable set! The lying article in last night's paper made me mad for a moment, but could not sting: yet the faces of my own men did as I came through the rooms."

"You've had a hard pull, Jack!" Cameron's voice was fatherly and soothing. "You might have put your money and your brains in something that would have proved much pleasanter. But the man who takes up the first end of a truth always gets hard knocks: it is the people who come after who find a smooth path. Don't you remember," drawing his wrinkled face into a queer smile, "the shrewd application your New York lady made about the children of Israel? Jack, if the salvation scheme of the Bible was all proved false,—which it never will be, to my mind,—there's so much wisdom in it beside, that a chap could take it just for a sort of guidebook in every-day matters, all the same. And now we're going to have a big fight."

"You think that?" cried Jack, in vague alarm. "I wish Winston was here. He can always talk so to the point!"

"Well, he isn't: we've got to go through it ourselves. But this settles it! You see, there's been Price, and Pickett, and Davy, to stir up strife and bad feeling, and all this outside influence; but my old woman's praying us through, and I set a good deal of store by her prayers, Jack! If these ruffians go on, Yerbury'll be half ruined again, but it is their own fault. I'm not much on capital punishment, but I would go to the hanging of that McPherson. If he'd staid away, we should have done well enough."

Jack drew a long, troubled breath.

"I'd let every man go out who wanted to, but I wouldn't pay-him a red cent, there!"

That evening Jack went down to Larch Avenue. He found Fred and Sylvie up in arms. Indignation was a mild term.

It was a magnificent night, with a nearly full moon. The light flooded the wide lawn path, and made shadows of elves and gnomes on the porch, as the wind wandered in and out the great honeysuckle, whose ripe, rich perfume was shaken about with every waft. Within, an Argand lamp, and porcelain shade with a minute painting of Puck and his fairy host, sent a softened radiance on the old, rich-hued carpet, and antique furniture. It was but little changed, yet wore an indescribably antique look.

Over at an open window sat Irene Lawrence, dressed in white, with a single deep-red velvety rose at her throat, which Sylvie had pinned there. Her hair had grown rapidly, and, though it did not quite curl, the ends tumbled about loosely, framing in the face with their dusky purplish tint. It was very clear now, and a little pale; the old brilliant coloring had not all returned; the passionless grace, the deep eyes with their steady lights, the mouth suggesting mobility and warmth and passion, rather than defining it, the droop of the white lids, the unruffled brow, and the pose of the bowed head and slightly-yielding throat, made a marvellous picture.

The three were talking earnestly, as people do in the great crises of life; Sylvie wondrously piquant, with some thin, black, trailing stuff making shifting billows about her restless feet. She questioned Jack eagerly, she denounced the attack as cruel and cowardly. What did he mean to do? What should Fred do for him?

"There is nothing to do, but just wait for the result. The dragon's-teeth have been sown. The only comfort I have is, that you never can put a lie on the face of truth, and nail it there. No amount of arguing or talk can make a thing so when it is not so. Higher than this little human round, God garners every truth in his keeping, and will make it tell somewhere!"

Miss Lawrence raised her eyes, and glanced over to him. Had the slow impassiveness of her soul been touched, that this sudden peculiar grace of sympathy, or some hidden kindred feeling, rose and asserted itself? And yet she might have been in some magnetic sleep, for all actual movement of her features; it was the dawn of an expression that seemed to transport him to some strange world, where he had known her long ago,—where he had watched for her coming, listened to her voice,—rather than any present interest or meaning.

He rose abruptly.

"You are not going!" cried Sylvie, in her pretty wifely imperiousness.

"I"—for a moment he had the sensation of a man drowning. The surging waves were about him, throbbing, leaping, strangling him. There was a ringing in his ears, there was a long shuddering sensation, like being overwhelmed.

"It is very warm," he went on in a faint, strained voice, wiping the beaded drops from his broad brow.

"Come over here," pleaded Sylvie: "you will be cooler. The wind is south, and doesn't blow in those windows. You are sure you feel quite well?" scanning him anxiously. "You look pale."

"It was only momentary." He wondered now what had so moved him. "I am like good old John Bunyan's Pilgrim,"—laughing faintly,—"'tumbled up and down' with these excitements. I wish they were at an end. We were going on so nicely when that McPherson came! Don't let us think any more about it," throwing up his head with a nervous shake. "Sylvie, I wish you would sing something."

"With pleasure. Fred and I have been practising duets. When Yerbury is laid in ashes we can go off as strolling minstrels;" and she laughed gayly, as she went to the piano. That exquisite tact in changing a mood or scene was a familiar characteristic of Sylvie Barry.

As the sound of their blending voices floated out on the summer night air, there leaped up in Darcy's soul a subtle, forceful, vivifying flame, touching to a white heat the farthest pulse of his being. Resistance appeared impossible: he did not even dream what manner of influence this might be. Long afterward—it seemed ages to him—as their heads were bent together over the pages of the music, he raised his eyes, and let them wander slowly toward Irene Lawrence.

Was there something quite new in the face,—a sort of strange, wondering, troubled expression, as if some unseen, almost unknown, depth had been stirred?

He did not need to ask the question now. Wild as it was, he loved that statue over yonder, and it seemed to him that his passion in its enduring vitality must awaken her soul to kindred life! An exultant strength and determination rose within him. What might have abashed another man, filled him with a deathless courage, as high as it was pure.

He thanked Sylvie and Fred for the song, but resisted their entreaties to remain. When he said good-night, he went over to Miss Lawrence, and took her hand. It was cold and passive, and her eyes fell beneath his.



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE excitement ran very high not only in Yerbury, but all over the country. Strikes seemed the order of the day again, and for what reason, was not clearly made manifest, unless labor felt that it had capital a little by the throat, in that its services were again somewhat in demand. "Now," said the prophets. Surely, if they did not strike when there was employment, they could not when there was none.

It began in the shoe-shop. The next Monday morning the men made their demand in no gentle terms, and were refused. There was a large contract at stake, however, and by Tuesday night the matter was talked over in a better spirit. The employers were willing to accede to one-half of the demand, otherwise the order must be sent to another firm. Thursday morning they went to work with a rather ill grace, yet some elation. Then the hatters took their turn. The hands at Hope Mills were served with a notice that the mutual protectionists in all the towns around were to be out on the following Monday; and stirring appeals were made to those who had any feeling of honor in the cause.

It was exceedingly hard on the men. They gathered around in little knots on Sunday, wild with conflicting emotions. Their faith in Hope Mills and co-operation was undergoing a severe strain. The fear of secret frauds, of underhand dealing, of distrust in Winston and Darcy, had been dinned in their ears by outside influence, some of it very potent. Not one appeal had been made by the managers: Cameron and the others decided it was best.

Jack went over to the mill on Monday morning. The gatekeeper and the bell-boy were there. The engineer came in with a quiet, solemn "Good-morning." The Brotherhood of Engineers had warned him too, and he was a little troubled; but he had cast in his lot with the rest, and it might be as well to wait and see what they did. The main shaft was turned.

Jack from his office-window watched the streets filling up with men and women, many beside the regular operatives. They came to a halt.

"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" the bell rang out cheerily on the summer morning air. "Come to work, come to work! The birds build homes, and rear their young; the bee skims the fragrant air in search of flowers; the rivers run to the sea, turning wheels, driving ships: nothing in the great economy of nature is idle," sang out the clang of the bell.

The hands glanced at one another in doubt and dismay, and there was an awful silence for a few seconds.

Some one elbowed his way through the crowd. He had come from the bedside of his sick child, who might be dying even now,—a small, wiry, middle-aged man, with a set, resolute face. He glanced about, then he sprang up on a pile of packing-boxes. It was Jesse Gilman.

"My fellow-workmen," he began, "I don't know how you all feel about this matter; but Hope Mills took me in when I had tramped the country half over, and found nothing to do. I've tried the old system, and this can't be any worse; and, if I have to lose money by an employer, I'd rather it would be John Darcy of Yerbury, than any man I know. No man on the face of the earth has a right to say I shall not work in Hope Mills when I made my own bargain long ago to do it. That is all I have to say. I am going to work."

"Three cheers!" cried some one as Gilman jumped down.

There were cheers and groans.

Ben Hay followed him, and stood a moment in the gateway.

"Boys," said he in his rich, ringing voice, "Hope Mills was opened to receive a crowd of starving men. I'll take my oath to Jack Darcy's honesty. He's stuck by us, and we'll stick to him. That's the beauty of co-operation. You can't get away, and tramp off with the first fool that asks you! It isn't merely keeping company: it's a good, honest, up-and-down marriage. I'd as soon think of leaving my wife because some day she didn't give me two dinners instead of one!"

There was a shout of laughter. The ice was broken in good earnest. "Three cheers for Ben Hay! Three cheers and a tiger for Jack Darcy!" and amid all this hubbub the men and women, the boys and girls, rushed in pell-mell. A gladder crew one never saw. To decide when others doubt, to go forward boldly when others hesitate, to stand up for the principle of right when others have traduced and blackened it, to take the first step, is to be as heroic as the "six hundred" of deathless fame.

They went to work with a will, though some were a little sore and doubtful, but they were carried on by the enthusiasm of the others. The street below was still blocked up, and there were yells and groans. Presently there came a shower of superannuated eggs. Two landed in Darcy's office-window. After that, a stampede of the riotous crew.

Darcy sent Andrew, the bell-boy, to the police-station, and two men were detailed. The workmen were allowed to go home peaceably, except a little jeering at Keppler's. They heard then the trains had been stopped on the two roads leading out of Yerbury. The whole world seemed to be going crazy.

Darcy and Cameron remained in the mill that night until almost ten: then the latter went home, and Darcy thought he would go for Ben Hay. The streets of Yerbury had presented a very peculiar aspect that evening, something like a beleaguered town. Groups of men and boys collected on the corners, or wended their way through the streets with low, ominous mutterings. People barred their doors and locked their windows, though it was a hot summer night. Some women were abroad: but they were of the rougher sort, and now and then their shrill voices rose on the air in derision or vituperation. Still there were no overt acts of violence, and at ten everybody began to breathe more freely.

The coffee-house had been shut up that evening: it was deemed advisable. Darcy went round to the side-door, and was admitted. Hay and three other workmen were within. They had been figuring up possible and probable profits by the end of the five years, and looked very well satisfied.

"There's a sort of hope and expectation about it," said one of the men, "that kind of stirs and warms a body. And when you come to count lost time, and fluctuation in wages, it makes a pretty even thing, after all! In '73 I worked in a shoddy-mill that had been making money hand over fist,—eleven hours a day,—not a man of us made more than five dollars a week. Some poor fellows with families earned only three. You've never been as hard up as that! God only knows how they lived: it's beyond my guessing!"

"And if that was co-operation, how the system would be blamed!" exclaimed Ben Hay. "I declare, it makes me madder than a hen in a fence—I've caught that of Cameron," laughingly,—"to hear the things people have said about us. They're forever blathering about fair play—I wish they'd give a little, as well as take all. Wait till we've come to the end, say I, before they tell what we can do, or what we can't or sha'n't or won't!"

There was a tramp in the street. The startled eyes studied one another. Then a shuffling and muttering, and a knock at the door.

No one stirred but Mrs. Connelly, who threw up her hands, and cried, "The saints protect us!"

"Earthly saints, Mother Connelly,—this kind," said Ben Hay with gay re-assurance, doubling his fist, and baring his brawny arm.

The pounding increased. Rose ran down stairs wild with affright, followed by her sister. The boys fortunately were asleep in the back chambers.

"Let us in, Mother Connelly: we want some bread and butter!" shouted a voice.

"Cakes and yale!"

"Pretzel and zwei lager!"

"A sup of the craythur!"

"A dhrop of whiskey to warrum us this could night! Av yees the heart av a sthone, Kit Connelly?"

A roar of laughter succeeded this.

"Go away, it will be better for you," declared Ben Hay.

"Come out here, Hay, and fight like a man! Don't skulk behind a woman's petticoats!"

There was a terrific onslaught at the door. It creaked and groaned, and was succeeded by a volley of oaths and imprecations. Rose began to cry, and the youngest girl came screaming down the stairs.

Darcy had sent a man out of the back way for policemen. Hay and the two other men mounted guard. Again the door shivered and creaked: then it flew open, bolts, locks, and hinges having given way in a mass of splinters.

Like a flash the men were on their assailants. The mob had not expected this. Right and left valorous blows were dealt, and two or three burly fellows were laid low. Some nearer sober, and more cowardly, took to their heels. Two men fought like tigers; and once Ben Hay came near getting the worst; but, by the time the dilatory guards of peace arrived, there was only a pile of bruised and battered bodies lying on the door-step.

"A pretty tough scrimmage!" was the comment. "Weren't you a little hard on these fellows?"

"A man has a right to defend his own life and his own nose," said Ben Hay decisively. "His life may be useful, his nose is ornamental when it is a handsome one like mine."

What with drunkenness and the drubbing, two of the ruffians were unable to walk. Two others were marched off under the escort of the officers, the disabled sent for, and a guard detached to protect Mrs. Connelly's house. When everybody had been quieted, Jack took a tour down to the mills. Some poor object was huddled up in the corner of the main stoop.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Darcy.

"Oh, Mr. Darcy, don't strike me! I'm Bart Kane. I've had enough of this night, and I crawled here"—

The boy began to sob and talk brokenly. He lifted his face in the moonlight. It was ghastly; one eye swollen shut, and purple-black, and streaks of blood and dirt over it; the clothing torn, the throat bare.

"Were you down there at Connelly's?"

"I warn't nowhere. It was along o' father: he comed home drunk."

Barton Kane was a mill-boy, about nineteen now. Darcy's first feeling had been one of outrage and anger, but he cooled suddenly.

"Tell me, my lad," in a kindly tone, taking the shivering fingers in his.

"You see, Mr. Darcy, father'd been out along of the hatters all day, gettin' more and more rum in him. He said on Sunday, as how't I should strike; but they went to work here, and I worked with 'em. When I went home, mother, she gev me my supper, and ses she, 'Keep out o' sight, lad, happen thy dad's powerful mad wi' thee!' So I went to bed. But about nine he comed home, and tore up the house wi' his tantrums, and then lathered me. He called me a rat, and a sneak, and a turn-coat, and kicked me out o' the house, and threw my traps to me. Then afore I was fairly dressed he at me again, and said if ever I darkened the door, he'd murder me! I strayed round, afeared of everybody, and crawled up here. 'Pears like every bone in my body is broke, and my eye, he do hurt so!"

With that Barton Kane broke out sobbing again, and clung to Jack Darcy's knees.

"My poor lad!" the tone was infinitely tender. "Can you walk a little way, to Kit Connelly's? You can be nursed up there, and go to bed peaceably. Come, Barton, my boy, you are the hero of Hope Mills. When this is over, we shall have to give you a medal."

He put his strong arm around the shivering body, and led him back to a kindly shelter.

"Hay, Mrs. Connelly, and all of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a little cool and clean."

"Let me do it, Mr. Darcy. Sure, I've boys of my own, and am used to it. Oh, the poor, poor lad!"

Barton told his story over again. He was weak and hysterical now, and they made him a shake-down on the floor until the doctor came.

"Now I'll start on my inspection-tour again," said Darcy, turning away. "We are all likely to make a night of it."

He thought he would go around before he went in to see the watchmen: they had placed a force on guard quietly. He had just turned the second corner, when he saw a man jump from the high fence, and lie for an instant as if stunned. He hastened on, but the man sprang up and ran down the dark side of the street. His first impulse was to follow; then it struck him as strange that the dog gave no alarm. He had a gate-key in his pocket, and unlocked it at once.

"Bruno!" he called, "Bruno, good fellow, come here."

There was not a sound. The ominous silence thrilled Jack.

"Bruno!"

Hark! a curious crackling or sweep of wind, and smoky smell. He ran round to the rear. Close up against the back door, quite out of the moonlight, something was piled. Forked tongues of flame were shooting out of it everywhere. He seized the chain attached to the factory-bell, and rang it rapidly. There was a window thrown up, and a voice called.

"Fire! fire!" he shouted. "Turn on the hose,—the lower back door."

The flames streamed up fiercely now. It was plain that the mound had been saturated with kerosene.

Daly hurried down, and opened a door. "Hurd and Byrnes are at the buckets and hose," he cried. "Where is it? O Mr. Darcy!"

"Quick, quick!" shouted Jack, rushing by him.

The men had the hose ready. They put it out of the window, turned on the stream, and in a few moments a column of dense smoke rose amid the arrowy flashes of lurid splendor. The watchman ran down from Connelly's.

It was subdued in a few moments. They tore away the charred boxes and debris, smoking and smouldering. Underneath all they found the body of princely Bruno.

"This is fiendish!" cried Jack, dragging the poor fellow away, his scorched coat smelling horribly. "Brave Bruno, you are the second hero of the night!"

"Whatever dastardly devil did this, knows as much about Hope Mills as you or I," shouted Hurd savagely. "Bruno was poisoned first; and he wouldn't have taken any thing from a strange hand. But the fellow was a fool to build the fire here."

"I don't know about that," said Darcy. "If it had burned the door down, it would have gone in the hall, and up the hatchway—if it was open."

"By thunder! so it would; and right to the stock-room. That place must never be left open again while Hope Mills stands, or co-operation waves her starry banner in the breeze."

"Loud applause!" said some one.

The fire was thoroughly extinguished; and the guardian of the night decided to remain here, being within call if another disturbance should occur at Mrs. Connelly's. The bells rang out for midnight. A few, who had gathered at the alarm, dispersed: and every thing became quiet again,—deadly, solemnly quiet.

Jack wanted to see Maverick, so he paced back to Mrs. Connelly's. He was trying to remember some distinctive mark of the man he had seen jump. He was too stout for Davy, and he could not believe such villany of the man. Then Price was a little lame from an old rheumatic affection, and would not have dared such a deed.

Barton Kane had been washed, patched, bandaged, put to bed, and given an opiate; so now he was in a sound but rather disturbed sleep. The men gathered in the lunch-room, and discussed the cowardly attempt upon the mill, the day's affairs generally.

"See how great a matter a little fire kindles," said Maverick. "But for McPherson's lecture here, I don't believe any of these things would have happened. It is a free country, of course, and a man has a right to air his ideas; but capital is not set firmly enough on its legs to stand a severe fire, and labor is in too great a superabundance. To seek to drain the ocean with a silver mug may be grand, but quite hopeless."

One! The witching hour, and a few sleepy men began to yawn.

"How odd it seems, not to hear trains in the night!" Maverick said presently. "A queer lock-out this."

One, again. One, two, three: this time the fire-alarm.

They rushed out toward the mill. Then they as suddenly wheeled around. In an instant the air seemed full of shouts and cries, and a broad sheet of flame flared up in the face of the tranquil heavens. A roar, like a mighty tramping of hosts, a crackling, snapping, sweeping sound.

"It's Keppler's. Boyd's block will surely go!"

The houses were frame, old and dry: Keppler's on the corner, the rest joined, like a row of sheds, and filled with the very poorest; a few apartments standing empty. The engines were out, but it was of little avail. The corner was just one brilliant sheet of lurid light. Shrieking women and children fled for their lives. The street swarmed again, and people trampled over one another in their wild terror. There was a crash, and the building fell in. The flames licked up the other fiery flood, and had a brave battle in the cellar. The engines played until the air was filled with smothering smoke, and there was nothing left but a long, blackened ruin.

"It may be ungenerous to rejoice in any man's misfortune," said Maverick, "but in a sanitary point of view I am thankful those old rookeries have come to an end. Boyd wouldn't do any thing to them, and they were unfit for pigs to live in. And, as for Keppler's, there will be but one verdict this end of the town."

Some one laid a hand on Jack Darcy's shoulder. He turned and saw Fred Lawrence.

"They are all worried to death about you, old chap," began Fred. "Your mother, Miss Morgan, Sylvie,—and Irene is walking the floor. I have not seen her so excited since—since she had the fever. What a horrible thing! Was any one lost, do you know?"

"They will not be able to tell that until morning, every thing is in such confusion. Pray God that the morning may dawn soon! I seem to have lived through years."

The dawn came up by and by; first in faint opaline splendors, then scarlet and gold. The moon paled, and the stars dropped out, and there was a chirp of birds to welcome the new-born day.

The shock of the fire cooled the temper of the raiders, for half the men were idle hangers-on, rather than absolute strikers. One frantic woman flew to the scene of devastation: her boy, four years old, was missing. They tried to comfort her with the thought that some neighbor had kindly taken him in, but she kept wildly imploring them to search.

There was no further molestation of the men at Hope Mills. They walked in the yard quietly at seven o'clock, their faces touched with surprise and terror when they heard the story of the night. Barton Kane lay disabled at Mrs. Connelly's, and poor Bruno was buried with honors, regretted by the whole force.

Jack called the men together, and addressed them briefly. He was very pale, and his usually bright, clear eyes were heavy.

"I want to thank you," he said, in a tone that was a little unsteady with exhaustion and emotion, "I want to thank you for standing so bravely by me, and by your principles. We are all partners together, and what is one man's interest is every man's. I feel sure that we shall never have another difficulty. We have gone through the worst, and in a little while every man will have his free choice again. Let us all keep the warmest of friends until then."

There was no cheering: they were not gay enough for that. Some of the men wrung his hand silently; then the women pressed forward, and invoked a blessing upon him.

"We know better nor any of 'em what it was to have no fire, and childers cryin' for bread," said one woman, wiping her eyes with the end of her faded shawl. "And, thank the Lord, I've had bite, and sup, and fire, ever since the day Hope Mills was opened."

The men outside were working at the ruins,—among them some of the strikers of yesterday. They found poor Mrs. Rooney's little Johnny, burned to a crisp; and in the house next to Keppler's they exhumed the body of Biddy Brady, a good-natured, efficient washerwoman, whose greatest fault was her intemperance. She and her son had gone to bed very drunk, after having a good time through the evening. The boy had been roused in season, but she had perished. It was as vivid and fervent a temperance-lecture as ever was given in Yerbury.

About ten in the morning Jack Darcy returned home dead tired, as much with the excitement as the fatigue, took a bath, and went to bed.

The Yerbury authorities looked sharply about them that day. The strikers were orderly and quiet, but they had lost ground. "The Evening Transcript" deprecated all this sort of business, and for once had no fling about the "Utopian theory of co-operation." But "The Leader" of the morning came out strongly in praise of the good order, forbearance, and esprit de corps of Hope Mills, and called Mr. Darcy "our young and enterprising citizen, whom, we doubt not, we shall hear of in higher positions in life, which he has proved himself eminently worthy to fill."

There was no great lament made about Boyd's Row or Keppler's saloon, except for the sad casualty it had caused; but the dastardly attack on Mrs. Connelly, and the fiendish attempt to burn Hope Mills, met with the severest condemnation.

Maverick came around to the Darcys that evening. "I fancy I have found your man, Jack," he began. "Mrs. Stixon called me in towards night, saying Jem had been on a spree, and was dreadfully beaten. I found one side of his face scratched and bruised, and bits of gravel still adhering to the flesh. The right arm, on the same side, has one bone broken, and his shoulder is dislocated. He said he fell off of a stoop, and is dreadfully sullen. I asked him what stoop, but he would not tell. Do you remember which way the man fell?"

Jack thought a moment. "On the right side, Maverick, away from me, or I should have seen his face. Just such a size man as Jem Stixon, too," with a satisfied nod.

"What will you do about it?"

Jack took two or three turns across the floor. "See here, Maverick, we will not do any thing. You cure the poor fellow, and I think he will never try to damage Hope Mills again. I can hardly forgive him Bruno, though."

"If I were Sylvie Barry,"—he never called her Mrs. Lawrence when speaking of her,—"I should say, 'Jack, you are an angel.'"

Jack flushed. "Masculine angels!" he laughed.

"Well, wasn't there Gabriel and a host of them? Why, Jack, they were all masculine!"

There was no need for earthly justice to meddle with Jem Stixon. His arm inflamed: he had led a hard life late years, and his system was in bad order. He would not listen to amputation until it was too late, and in less than a month he was dead. It was better for his poor hard-working wife and family.

One other death grew out of the summer riots, though this was at a distance. Dennis Connelly had been working with a railroad-gang, and the strikers there had a desperate struggle with the civil authority. They were worsted in the end, and Connelly was one of the victims, or perhaps more truly speaking, a victim to bad whiskey, for when sober he was very peaceable. Kit sent for his body, and had him decently buried.



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE strikers at the hat-factory did not carry the day. The employers were very indignant, and tabooed the union men altogether. At Garafield's the men were called in council, the points discussed, and a small advance in wages allowed. The co-operatives went their way quietly. Perhaps the most convincing argument was a very jubilant letter from Winston, part of which Darcy put up in the hall. He had just succeeded in making an important contract for two years, on very fair terms. That would see them through safely unless the whole world came to grief again!

Jack wrote Miss McLeod a graphic account of the "labor troubles," and she replied with equally characteristic verve. "She could hardly decide," she declared, "whether to be glad, or sorry, that her young friend had grown so independent of her; but in any emergency she wished to be remembered."

There was now a certain respect paid to Hope Mills, among the community at Yerbury. Perhaps there are no people so exacting and difficult to satisfy as those friends and neighbors whose advice you have not taken, and prospered without it. They indulge in a righteous self-complacency if you are unfortunate, and pity you grandly; but to own themselves mistaken is the one bitter flavor in the cup. There seemed to be but one point now upon which they were doubtful,—the honesty of the managers at the last moment. Every workman knew or might know exactly how affairs stood, but they did not have the capital. Just at the end of the five years somebody might abscond with the money-bag under his arm. It seemed so every way certain that human nature could not withstand the temptation.

Yet there was growing up among the hands a curious neighborly sympathy, as if they were in some degree relatives; and they were made so, in fact, by some marriages of sons and daughters. They were more intelligent; they kept their houses cleaner, their little gardens prettier, not allowing them to go to weeds before the summer was half over. Those who could go to the industrial school learned a deal about sewing, and became seamstresses instead of mill-girls. Some made their own family dresses, some were very tasty milliners. It gave them a reliance upon what they could do themselves. The two daughters of one workman kept a little poultry-yard "scientifically," and dressed themselves from its proceeds. Industry became more general. Instead of dawdling away whole evenings in gossip, they had some light employment, and worked as they talked.

The September showing was very encouraging. There were still a great many bankruptcies and losses, but some of them could not be guarded against. Darcy and Winston regularly eschewed speculation, though the latter confessed his fingers sometimes burned to be in the pie.

"But, after all," he said frankly, "if the energy, ingenuity, ambition, and strength that are expended to make certain people buy and sell, over and over, a thing that can be no more valuable than the money it makes year by year, which often is not much,—if this were turned into industrial and commercial channels,—gad! what a country we would be! Our flag would float on every sea, our goods be in every port. And yet they go on, rich to-day because they have beggared their neighbor, poor to-morrow because their neighbor has beggared them. What idiotic business!"

But I must go back a little with my hero. There were many things to occupy his mind, the summer of the "strikes;" yet through it all, like one strain of heavenly harmony in a clash of discord, he came to know the diviner needs of his being. Another man might have been dismayed at the revelation. Like a flash when the horizon is opened, he saw the light; and he knew, from the depths of the darkness the next moment, what manner of storm it would be.

He had never weakened or frittered away his sweetest emotions on the various flirtations that fill the early years of so many men. He had liked and admired Sylvie Barry above all young women he had ever met; but this emotion, though pure and lasting, never stirred the ardor of his soul. Had it really lain untouched so long, or had some vague dream slipped into it the night he and Sylvie had planned the costume for Irene Lawrence, the time he first encountered her beauty in all its vivid splendor? To him she was a glorious young goddess.

The long-ago summer day he had met the two in the phaeton, he was more keenly pained for her sake than his own. To be sure, his first emotion was that of angry indignation, sending the outraged blood through every pulse; then, as it cooled, the act appeared so utterly unwomanly. If she had passed him by carelessly—but to designedly attract his glance, and stab it thus, was as if a giant had taken a club to kill a butterfly because it breathed the fragrance of the rose. He shut out that vision. You can tell what impression she had made upon him, when he always thought of her as he saw her in the glow of Sylvie's pretty parlor, that summer night. His healthy, active temperament never brooded over disagreeable things a moment longer than necessity kept him there.

She faded from his mind by degrees. Even when he took Fred back into the old regard, he thought of her as the possible wife of some millionnaire. When she returned to Yerbury, and shut herself up in stately despair, refusing even Sylvie's proffered sympathy, she puzzled him. How could she, so fond of admiration and gayety, live this nun's life, without the nun's spiritual exaltation? He passed her once or twice in the hall, as he was calling on Fred, but neither made any sign.

Then came that terrible night, when he had found her astray, her brain consumed by the smouldering fire of isolation, when you have only the black, choking smoke that never blazes up in purifying flames. There are thousands of women who have done this, weakly, sentimentally, through the period of adversity that has tried the metal of all souls; but she, being stronger, more self-reliant, could not drop into puerile whining.

At Depford Beach they had come in contact again. There was both attraction and repulsion in these two people, as there often is in strongly-marked, positive natures. She tolerated him because he was Sylvie's lover; despised him, believing that he meant to make a stepping-stone of this girl's wealth and position; and, in spite of herself, felt the current of his strength and buoyant energy. By slow degrees the unwilling truth was forced upon her, that God never created any human soul for its own self-destruction; that there was no absolute virtue in warping and twisting circumstances into chains and bonds, that were ordained for higher, nobler purposes. Her mental disease had run its course. Sylvie's sorrow was the final electric shock that broke the heavy soil of apathy.

Her utter surprise when she found that through all these years Jack Darcy had refrained from influencing Sylvie in his behalf, was something quite indescribable. She thought she had fathomed men's souls with her keen insight, but this man was a Saul amid his peers. Had there been some subtile, far-reaching foundation for Fred's regard in the boyhood days,—something that their eyes, being holden with golden bonds, could not see?

After the marriage there was a certain degree of association, not intimacy. And yet she set herself to watch him. Somewhere she would discern the print of the feet of clay this idol of Fred and Sylvie's possessed.

It was a most fascinating yet dangerous employment. She used to sit there in her impassive grace, as they talked, weighing every word, testing every sentiment, watching the expressions that flitted over Jack Darcy's countenance, until it went everywhere with her, the blue-gray eyes piercing the very depths of her soul. They came to the one night when a glance stirred and troubled both, when the depths of both natures experienced that curious shock of repulsion and wonder. It was not love, it was too near, too awesome, yet too spiritually pure, to be hate, still it sent them apart none the less surely.

By degrees, even amid the hard struggle of the strikes, he came to a self-knowledge. His perceptions were not easily confused; and by that intuitive process born pure in every soul, but too often marred and dulled by the many counterfeits put upon it, he knew this was love, a life-long passion for one woman, not because she had as yet answered any need of his nature, or promised any expansion into higher life. He loved her just as she was; for her beauty, her swift, proud grace, her virtues if she had any, her very faults, and of those he was not in doubt. And he set himself to win her with the same high courage that had taken Hope Mills in hand.

Occasionally we see a man wrecked by this steady, persistent, overwhelming love for an inferior object, caught perhaps by some occult fascination that flashes all laws out of sight. We wonder how he can be so led astray; and yet it is an integral part of the man, a quality of the soul which he would not overcome and put in bonds if he could.

He did not cringe or flatter, or adopt any of the fears or weaknesses of passion. It was not weak, and he did not fear. He meant to be master of her soul, and win her through that very power, struggle as she might. He would wait, if it were years, until she laid down her few weak weapons, and capitulated. From that time onward, there would be neither "mine" nor "thine."

And now the fine, tested quality of his patience stood him in good stead. He might long to draw near, to clasp the snowy hand, to study the fathomless dusk of the eyes, and note the frightened droop of the fringed lids; but he held aloof. Still he went to Larch Avenue night after night; he dropped in of a morning when least expected, occasionally finding her alone for a few moments; he walked from church with them, by her side, the only times he came near her, and she felt in every pulse of her being the indefinable something that she was impelled to struggle against.

A curious change came over her. The cold indifference melted to a rose hue of interest, a pliant softness stole over her figure, a certain buoyant tenderness diffused itself in her tone, her dusky eyes came to have a startled softness like a shy, frightened fawn. The old brilliant color returned to cheek and lip, yet toned with the tremulous throbbing of a new inward life, so exquisitely attuned that she could but listen to the harmonious melody.

She came to understand presently; the intangible power in his demeanor roused her, I think; and her whole soul, every fibre of her body, rose up in mutinous revolt. Whither was this swift current carrying her? What great wave was this that struck at the very props of her own strength and reliance? How did this man dare to invade the walled sanctities of her being? She would have none of him: she would go on her solitary way, sufficient for herself. She, who had never loved amid all the beguilements the world had to offer, to be conquered by the very man she had trained herself to despise!

Irene Lawrence found it hard fighting with this unseen foe. He seemed always lying in ambush, always armored with a word or sentiment to which she must assent, always before her in the place she had meant to be; and she would not throw up the white flag of defeat. She would not own to herself she experienced any alarm or annoyance.

One evening Fred and Sylvie had gone to a neighbor's, and were momentarily expected. A peculiar temptation entered her soul. If this man must needs flutter in the flame, why should she be tender and careful of him? Others had dared her, to the burning of their very souls: if the experience was worth the pain, he should have it, and decide.

She sat down at the piano, and shook a shower of melody out of her slender finger-ends. All the affluent grace of womanhood with the polish of society spoke in every curve of her pliant figure, in the dainty, delicate, high-bred gestures. The eyes hung out their false lights of treacherous intent amid the half-slumberous fire; the very lips seemed shaped and blossoming with a rare thrill of passion that could turn to a caress at a look. All along the brow ran fine sinuosities of light that dazzled like the tracery of pale flame. Had she blossomed into some royal midsummer flower that is seen but once in an age?

She had motioned him close beside her with an impelling wave of the hand. He could feel her warmth, her fragrant breath; her soft billowy dress fell against his foot in a crested wave; her white hand and slender wrist, just toned, but not hidden, with rare lace like that of Arachne's spinning, wandered temptingly over toward him. A sudden delirium took possession of him, an exhilaration that steeped the brain, that stirred every pulse, that awoke in him an almost maddening desire to clasp her in his arms, to drain such sweetness from her lips that the whole world might be beggared ever after, and he not care.

She knew the signs. She had seen more than one man dally on the brink, and then topple over to the blankness of despair. Even if she had pitied herself, which she did not, she could have had no mercy on him. Now she was set to her work, and she meant to do it if she brought into play every fascination art and nature had furnished her with.

His soul rose and glowed within him. The music, the most ravishing of its kind, stirred him to that intensity of pain, it seemed as if he must cry out with torture. No suffering had ever been like this: if the doctrine of sacrificial fires were true, he might have purchased paradise.

Did he mean never to stir or speak? Could that hand, lying so passively on the corner of the piano, remain unmoved, with hers just below it? Its defiant strength stung her.

"They do not come,"—looking warily around, and passing him with her veiled eyes, rather than looking at him. "Are you growing weary? Shall I sing for you?"

The tone had the melody of some lotus-freighted stream. She had thrown all her sweetness into it.

"If you will."

His was tremulous and husky with repressed passion.

Her voice was not pure: it had the rich depth and pathos of contralto, and the vibrant clearness of soprano. Now it threaded a tremulous pathway among the pathetic minor notes, while the fingers seemed to drop a faint sigh of accompaniment,—

"Oh! when ye hear me gie a loud, loud cry,— The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,— Shoot an arrow frae thy bow, and there let me lie, And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair.

"And when ye see that I'm lying cauld and dead,— The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,— Then ye'll put me in a grave wi' a turf at my head, And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair."

The last sad note died into summer-night sweetness. A current of bland, dangerous magnetism passed between them. She turned her splendid, passion-lighted eyes to him, and the subtle, measuring, conquering forces in the man and the woman met. With a mighty effort he thrust back desire, and compressed his lips to a line under the bronzed-gold moustache, while his eyes, like points of steel, never wavered.

Irene Lawrence turned blindly, and held out her hands as if to grasp some sure stay. Just as surely as she had not won, she had lost.

"I have tired you," he said,—a murmur just under his breath. "But you can hardly know the exquisite pleasure you have given me. It is perfect. We will have no more music to-night;" and he rose, shutting the piano down.

She went to the open window like one in a trance, so stunned she could not even feel angry at his defiance of her. A long, long moment of silence: then they heard Sylvie's bright voice on the porch, and she came in with a waft of dewy, outdoor fragrance.

Miss Lawrence went to her room presently, to fight out the battle with herself. She admitted then that she had come to love Jack Darcy; but she was strong and resolute, and would not be mastered by the passion. What could she do? for go away she must! Her imperious will and knowledge of men had availed her little to ward off this one's influence. Every instinct had been baffled, every movement had been met with a counterpoise. To stay here, and struggle, would be to yield eventually.

There were dark circles under her eyes the next morning, tokens of her vigil and strife. She intrenched herself again behind that dumb apathy: she stood aloof from Sylvie. For days she escaped the watchful sight of Darcy; but she heard his voice, and every rebellious pulse was a-tremble. She cast about for some expedients whereby to escape her prison honorably, and after several fruitless efforts found one.

In their early days there had been a girl-friend between Agatha and Gertrude, who had always held an attraction for the child Irene. Wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished, she had married a man who had already made for himself a name in statesmanship, a cultured and polished gentleman, and her bridal had been the theme of the day. But the fiend of intemperance had wrought destruction of her brilliant prospects, and made her life an open scandal. When it could no longer be borne, she gathered up the wreck of her fortune and her two little girls, and opened a boarding-school in a quiet, aristocratic old town. Irene had met her in New York after her own loss of fortune; and, though she had disdained sympathy, she was touched by Mrs. Trenholme's kindliness.

She wrote to her now; and, of half a dozen applications, this was the only one that elicited a favorable reply. Mrs. Trenholme needed a teacher of French and music, and she knew Miss Lawrence's accent was perfect. The salary was not large, being four hundred dollars a year; but the duties were not very arduous, being all confined to school-hours.

Much as Irene desired to go, there was some struggle with her pride before she could bring herself to accept. Only the prospect of that greater pride being laid in ruins before her eyes, could finally have induced her. Mrs. Trenholme expressed her delight warmly.

There were strenuous objections on Fred's part when it came to be talked over. "She had no need. He was as much her protector as her father had been: indeed, was he not paying back the kindly care to himself, honoring his father's memory by doing as he would have done?"

Sylvie came to the rescue presently.

"I would let her go, Fred," she counselled. "Beverly is a delightful place, with many cultured people, and Mrs. Trenholme is just the woman to have an influence over Irene. You see, she gets so tired of having no pursuit, no strong interest. I could not endure it myself."

"But she might have—I have dared to dream"—

"Put away dreams, my darling." Sylvie's voice was unconsciously sad. Then, with a smile, and tears, "If God kept watch over us, and brought us to our haven, can we not trust him for her,—for them?"

And so they acquiesced.

When Jack Darcy left Miss Lawrence on that fateful evening, his whole soul was full of unrest. He paced the quiet streets in that tense mood which makes thought and breath alike torture. Now that it was over, he said, with the inconsequence of love, that he had been a weak, cowardly fool to fear his fate too much; and yet the next instant he knew he would surely have lost it all, and that in time she must come to need him. If he could wait! Well, he would wait. He had not trained himself heretofore in these long reaches of patience for no purpose. That richly satisfying, inward sight, she could not take from him, that exultant faith which was warmed and fed from a thousand secret rills.

He understood why she shunned him, why she had resolved to leave Yerbury; and he was thankful now that he had not ruined his cause by impatience. To think of not seeing her, of not hearing her voice, was like madness! His face grew thin, there were tense lines about his mouth and a set resolve in his eyes; yet to his fine temper came no moodiness or irritability. The task he had set for himself must be accomplished. He was as absolute in his self-denial as he would be in his happiness when that came.

So she went away with the merest friendly farewell, and asked herself angrily, an hour after, what power this man had over her, and why she feared him? Surely there was not much of the lover in that calm face!

He threw himself into the business with renewed energy. As I said, the September account was inspiriting. Prospects began to look brighter, only it was admitted on all hands that the days of large profits and quick fortunes were over for a long while, if not for all time. Industry was coming to be respected, and you heard less talk about luck.

The outside world kept watch of them narrowly, jealously. If they turned out thieves and swindlers, it would not be for the lack of advice. However, they tramped on and on. Their store gained a little, and was productive of much good. Keppler went to a different part of the town. Boyd sold the ground, and a row of decent cottages were to be put up. Kit Connelly had been reimbursed by the town for her damages, and with Ben Hay's advice and counsel built an addition to her house, which he and Rose took for housekeeping purposes. The lunch and coffee room was a regular and profitable institution, and would be a business for one of the boys as he grew up to manhood.

Sylvie and Fred went to the city for a winter holiday. Fred's book was elegantly brought out, and won him much praise and a little money. Sylvie achieved her ambition, and sold two pictures at what she considered marvellous prices, but she wisely confessed it only to her husband. They were invited to clubs and soirees; and Mrs. Minor was extremely affable, though she did blame Fred for allowing Irene to take such an idiotic step.

Darcy and Maverick indulged in two or three flying trips. Miss McLeod liked nothing better than to get these young people together, and listen to the animated conversations, herself as spicy and sharp as any one. Miss Lothrop was married; and in the slim, fair, blushing girl the old lady had for companion now, he saw no danger.

So the winter wore away, and the spring came again; and the man who was counting the days wondered wearily at times what his summer harvest might be.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE regal woman who stepped from the car to the station-platform at Yerbury, one balmy day in early June, to be greeted by Fred and Sylvie Lawrence with the warmest of welcomes, was indescribably different from the pale, cold, haughty statue that had gone away. There was an elasticity in her step, a self-reliance in her air, and the peculiar confidence discipline wisely used inevitably imparts.

Yet there had been no romantic or highly-wrought change in her. She had not taken up teaching from any heroic motive or the possible benefit to any one, but simply to protect herself from what she considered the weakness of her own soul, to get away from a danger she could not fight. Oh, how she had hated French verbs and exercises! If hers had been a susceptible musical temperament, she would have gone quite crazy with the blunders and sentimentalisms of young girls.

After a month of it, she would have welcomed any relief, even the face-to-face conflict with Darcy. But she could not well run away from here, and her physical health was perfect: so there was nothing but to go straight on, and find that circumstances had to govern, that she could not shut herself up in sullen majesty, or fling off the daily duties for some wiser and more patient hands to pick up, and restore to beauty and harmony.

She had a friend, the best and truest that a young woman could have, perhaps; a woman so admirably adapted to the training of girls, that it was no marvel she succeeded. Out of the ruins of her life she had built up another, wise, sweet, and strong. As Irene began to comprehend what Mrs. Trenholme had suffered and achieved, for the first time she paid an honest reverence to the nobility of character. And now she despised her own petty, shallow thoughts and beliefs. Her lofty despising of the world and the vain and selfish people therein had been only a kind of scornful regret for the treasures wrested from her, the glitter of fashion, the gauds of society. Fred had made a braver stand than she. He had not sought to poise himself on the easy, graceful rounds of past promises, and to dream futile weakening dreams, nor shut himself up in morbid isolation.

After all, how little the great world really cared! It was the few friends, the small circle, the near influences, that were of importance. And when she found that here in cultured, delightful Beverly, she was sought out as an entertaining guest, that she had not lost caste because the great bubble of fortune had shivered into fragments, that dressing and shopping and flirting were not the highest of human enjoyments, she came to a very rational frame of mind, and to a certain extent enjoyed her life. But nature had not made her a teacher of children, and never does such women, until, informed by that highest of all love, they teach their own.

She came back beautiful, strong, and brave, resolute to dare any thing. She dazzled them at the little tea-table by her swift, easy animation, her brilliancy, the color that went and came, the smiles that were like rippling billows over a sea. And Sylvie's heart went down like lead, though it was such a fair picture. "For now," she thought, "Jack will never dare to love her!"

Perhaps not, if he had to begin now. But the love was in him and of him, and would be hers all his life long, whether she took it or no.

He did not come for a day or two. She wondered a little: she even laughed lightly at her own past fear, the shadow she had conjured up, the warm blood ran so healthily through her veins now.

He sauntered in one morning to find her cutting roses with Sylvie, the two the fairest flowers in all the garden. He was in no wise abashed at this vision of loveliness: if she had a dower of beauty, he had his unstained manhood.

They chatted and laughed. Sylvie pinned a pale bud and geranium-leaf in his coat. He held out his hand to Irene with a curious little gesture. She had two or three great royal purple pansies clasped lightly in her fingers.

She meant to refuse courteously, but their eyes met. Was it the old spell working?

Surely, surely all these fine-spun barriers, all these cunning Alps that she had thrown up day after day, were over-leaped at a supple bound. Master herself she might; but he stood in his man's power and pride and love, a suppliant, yet king, asking with wordless lips a little favor, taking with calm yet passionate eyes a royal largess. Her heart sank; her breath came in one long, tremulous sweep. Whether she gave, or he took, she could not have told; but he went away with the pansies in his fingers, despite Sylvie's pleading for a longer stay.

When he was quite out of sight, he kissed them, sweet, tender, longing kisses. Then he dropped them between the white leaves of a little book, to be sacred forever. Sylvie's boutonniere might keep him company outwardly, but those no eye must feast upon.

He took the fine right of a lover, not declared, yet certain of his ground, not using any power that she could disdain or wound, it was so delicate, intangible, the perfume without the flower, the little thoughtfulness for her, reaching for her fan, folding her shawl about her if the evening blew up cool, seeming to know her wants the very instant they occurred to herself. And though she rebelled in secret, though she resolved heroically to put an end to it all, the golden moment never came.

It seemed as if the four were always together. Not but what Yerbury opened spacious doors to them, and proffered flattering welcomes; but they could not tone themselves to the insipidities of society. There were more complete and intense enjoyments. Sylvie and Irene took long drives through country lanes, or of a moonlight summer evening they all went. They sat on the porch, and Jack came strolling by: they went within, and there were books, music, desultory talking, and that wondrous, unseen guest in their midst.

Sylvie rarely left her alone. They were not the women to tease one another by flippant jests or allusions; and Mrs. Fred, of all others, had a dread of thrusting any vulgar face on this colorless, yet delicious, atmosphere. Love knew his own, and was sacredly known of them.

Irene Lawrence could no more help blossoming under the intense yet steady warmth of his temperament, the vivid creative life in every feature, than she could have helped being at all; and to have refused or destroyed the love would have been as sure spiritual suicide as a poison to the body. He understood that she came to see this presently; and then his suit was half won,—more than half: he had only to go on to the royal fruition of hope and patience. She no longer shunned him: she dropped that pointed, distant "Mr. Darcy," and in the soul's own language, gave him no outward name.

And, when he took her at her royal flood-tide, the words of asking and answering mattered little. A look, a tone, a clasp of hands, a last struggle of her pride, and she was his.

The wide, warm summer night closed about them: the dusk was rich with floating dewy perfumes, and golden stars dazzled in the clear, moonless sky. Out in the trees a little bird, startled from her nap, sang a brief, sweet song to her little ones. He drew the proud yet yielding figure closer: their hearts beat, their flushed cheeks touched, their lips met in one long, heavenly caress, their hands clasped until pulse throbbed with pulse in impassioned unison.

Only a death and a great love can so change the aspect of life. As in the grave lies buried the dearest promises of love, hope, existence itself, and we learn in time to cling to every faint dream, so, like a resurrection, love sweeps away the sins and follies and weaknesses of the past, and rises from the dust and ashes transformed, renewed, nay, born again to the most sacred purposes.

A strange, swift impression rushed over her as she met the eager, intense eyes. Was it in another world these arms had closed about her with their strong, restful clasp? She started abruptly: she seemed to listen, to puzzle herself with the bewildering impression.

"What is it, my darling?" in a deep, ardent voice.

"I don't know"—with a nervous laugh and shiver. "Have we met in some other country? Did you carry me over mountains, or through valleys, or hide me from a storm? Was this why I could never get away, try as I might?"

Oh the wordless, entreating beauty of those eyes!

"My queen, my own, you will never try again."

"Never!" with a long, delicious, sobbing breath. "Why are you so irresistibly, so powerfully strong, Jack? Do you know,—you must know how wicked I have been! If you cast me out, it would only be a proper punishment. I don't mean that my lips or my hands are blurred with other men's kisses. I never could endure that," shuddering. "But they laid down their hearts, and I walked over them: they were weak, and I was strong! And one night I tried"—her voice sank to a beseeching, half-shamed murmur.

"Yes," he gave a pure, genial laugh, rich in his own sustaining strength. "You would have broken my heart, your own too; for I think, even then, you loved me."

"I surely have never been indifferent. It was either love or hate. Do you remember the first evening I saw you in the parlor yonder?"

She learned ere long, that he had never forgotten any thing; but the depth and perfectness of his love she could not learn in a day.

If Jack Darcy had been patient hitherto, that grand quality seemed suddenly exhausted. He absolutely hurried her into a marriage,—hurried Sylvie too, who wanted the courtship to proceed with measured, golden steps.

"As if it were not to be a courtship all one's life!" said radiant Jack. "Now the moments break in the middle, there are tangled ends, and endless beginnings, and one can hardly remember where one left off. Were you sorry to go to Fred?"

"Why, no!" with wide-open, surprised eyes.

He carried the day at last, and September was appointed. They would be married in the old church. Mrs. Minor responded to the tidings by a visit. She had treasured up a great many things to say to Irene; but for once she was quite overwhelmed, and her sneers and patronage fell to the ground. Though she did remark to her mother,—

"Of course I am disappointed that Irene, with her face and style, has not done any better; but you cannot expect much after one passes twenty. Mr. Darcy has improved certainly, and Irene is not as exclusive as we older girls were. It is a great pity she did not go out to Gertrude."

For George Eastman, with a cat-like propensity, always came down on his feet. He was now at the flood-tide of prosperity—on other people's money. Mrs. Eastman was regal in velvets, sables, and diamonds, queening it at St. Petersburg. Some day there might be a crash again, but they would be well out of the way.

Miss Lawrence would have no diamonds, and no show; but she was dazzling in her radiant loveliness; and, if Jack was not handsome, his superb manliness redeemed him. Hope Mills took a holiday. All Yerbury went, it seemed; and those who could not get in remained outside for a glimpse.

Sylvie and Fred leaned over the registry in the vestry-room. In a bold hand the bridegroom had written, "John Beaumanoir Darcy."

"A compliment to Irene's pride," laughed Sylvie. "The most aristocratic name of them all!"

The old house was brightened up a bit before the young couple returned. Gentle Mrs. Darcy wondered how it would be between the old and the new love; but she remembered with charity, that she had taken the fresh young love of another Darcy, and was content with her day.

The young people brought a new atmosphere with them, but it did not clash with the old. Jane Morgan was planning a home for herself. One of the cut-up farms had been put together again; and she had taken a five-years' lease at a low rate, to try a prudent and sensible scheme of philanthropy. Maverick had been intensely puzzled by Jack's love-affair, and could not yet account for it satisfactorily, but watched them both with a kind of amused interest, and dreamed of the deft, dainty little fairy down at his aunt's.

I suppose I ought to say that Mrs. Jack Darcy vied with her husband in all good works,—in schools and clubs, and plans for everybody's improvement; but it was not her forte. He was too well satisfied with her love for him, her music, her enchanting ways, to wish her any different; and I think he would have been jealous, with that exclusive, tender, adoring jealousy, that cannot endure its choice treasures lavished upon others. She was kindly and generous in a stately, queenly fashion; but what between Jack, who was a more importunate lover than ever, and the baby born at Larch Avenue, she had her hands quite full.

The five years of mutual copartnership drew to a close. Their young engineer had not blown up the mills; Bob Winston did not go off at the last moment with the balance at the bank; Jack Darcy had not falsified accounts: but it came out just as everybody had predicted that it would! "If your men were honest and honorable, co-operation could not fail of success. It was the simplest of all schemes," said "The Evening Transcript."

The two offices were thrown into one by the sliding-doors, and the workmen and women assembled in their holiday gear. Jack Darcy was really struck with the change in their faces and the general demeanor. They had a brisk, cheery, self-reliant air: there was a certain neatness and respectability about which they used not to care in the old times. The boys of five years ago were grown men, and there wasn't a sturdier one among them than Barton Kane.

And now Jack Darcy proceeded to read the statement of the whole period, to which every one listened with the most profound attention.

At the close of the first year, after rent, wages, and all other expenses were taken out, the accumulation of profits had been $21,642.27. One-half of this, $10,821.13.5, had been turned directly over to capital: the other half, the profit of labor, was divided again in equal shares, one going to capital for every person, the other, amounting to $5,410.56.7, paid over to them as compensation for three-quarter wages. Of course the men had been delighted. They remembered their first joy even now.

Then had followed the disastrous second year, which had no such golden story to tell. The first six months, interest and discount had made horrible inroads into capital, and there had not only been no surplus, but an actual deficiency. The latter half showed a poor frightened balance of $137. But this year they improved greatly in economic management and several new processes that gave larger profit with less labor and outlay, so the hard strain had not been entirely without its uses. Capital had gone down in the valley of humiliation, and had a sorry time of it; but with it had come a knowledge and sympathy they could have acquired in no other way.

The third year had proved a grand success. They had all worked so heartily together, and business had been undeniably good. Profits had been $41,854.92, with very limited discounts. After this there was none, and unused capital began to draw a little interest. This year there had been $10,963.73 to pay over to the men on the quarter share. The fourth year there had been numerous bankrupt stocks thrown on the market, and every one trying to do his utmost again: still the balance had been by no means disheartening, amounting to $34,982.67; capital's share being $17,491.33, and the wages overplus $8,745.66. The last year's profits had footed up $43,101.56.

There was now in accrued capital stock $106,288.81.5; and this was to be divided in the pro rata of each man's share, the larger amounts making the most, of course. And now they saw the object of saving. They had earned full wages and something beside; and, though wages had not reached the high point of good times, on the other hand they had not fallen below a reasonable standard, even with the bad year. There had been steady work for the whole five years, and every man had been practised in thrift, economy, and self-denial.

Of those who had begun with them, seven had been discharged for drunkenness and insubordination, their share forfeited to the fund for sick and disabled workmen; three had gone out from loss of faith in the plan, accepting Winston's offer to sell; four had died, and thirteen had left from various other causes. So that there had been a much greater degree of steadiness than usually obtains among factory-workmen. This led to a decided improvement in many other respects. With a prospect of being permanent, the men were induced to buy homes, and took a greater interest in the management and welfare of their own town.

The balance was divided, each man receiving his check, and with it a detailed statement of the whole five years. They were now quite free, the industrial partnership having legally expired. Hope Mills would take a fortnight holiday for repairs and re-organization.

"What if there were to be no re-organization?" exclaimed Ben Hay suddenly.

The men stared blankly at one another. No "Hope Mills," and the foundation-stone of life would have fallen out!

Robert Winston addressed them, thanking them very heartily for their co-operation, and expressing a hope that each man would be satisfied with the result of five of the hardest years the country had ever known. There was no doubt now, judging from our exports, and the amount of money coming in from every quarter of the globe, as one might say, that we had entered upon an era of prosperity. We had been educated to the practice of prudence, of common-sense, and sound principles, we had gained fibre and stamina, and he hoped we had gained honesty and integrity. If we could not always compete with low-priced manufacturers, the solid truth was made manifest in the end. They might take for their passwords, "Honesty, industry, and fidelity."