"Be calm now, Grant," piped the Doctor; "don't go off half cocked."

Grant's eyes flared—his nose dilated and the muscles of his heavy jaw worked and knotted. He answered in a harsh voice:

"Oh, I'll be calm all right, Doctor. I'm going down in the morning and plead for peace. But I know my people. I can't hold 'em."

Those in the room stood for a moment in dazed silence; then the Doctor and Brotherton, realizing the importance of further discussion that night, soon withdrew from the room, leaving Dick voluble in his grief and Lida, his wife, stony and speechless beside him. She shook no sympathizing hand, not even Grant's, as the Bowmans left for home. But she climbed out of the chair and down the stairs on tired, heavy feet.

In the morning there was turmoil in the Valley. In the Times Jared Thurston, with the fatuous blundering which characterizes all editors of papers like his, printed the news that little Ben Bowman would be denied his rights, as a glorious victory over the reformers. In an editorial, written in old Joe Calvin's best style, the community was congratulated upon having one judge at last who would put an end to the socialistic foolishness that had been written by demagogues on the state statute books, and hinting rather broadly that the social labor program adopted by the people at the last election through the direct vote would go the way of the fool statute under which the Bowman lad hoped to cheat the courts of due process of law.

In vain did Grant Adams try to rally carpenters to the trocha. He pleaded with the men to raise a special fund to take little Ben's case through the federal courts; but he failed.

The Wahoo Valley saw in the case of little Ben Bowman the drama of greed throttling poverty, all set forth in stark, grim terms that no one could question. The story appealed directly to the passions of the Valley and the Valley's voice rose in the demand to resort to its last weapon of defense. The workers felt that they must strike or forfeit their self-respect. And day by day the Times, gloating at the coming downfall in Van Dorn's program of labor-repression, threw oil on the flaming passions of the Valley, so labor raged and went white hot. The council of the Wahoo Valley Trades Workers came together to vote on the strike. Every unit of seven was asked to meet and vote. Grant sat in his office with the executive committee a day and a night counting the slowly returning votes. Grant had influence enough to make them declare emphatically for a peaceful strike. But the voice of the Valley was for a strike. The spring was at its full. The little garden plots were blooming. The men felt confident. A conference of the officials of the council was called to formulate the demands. Grant managed to put off the strike until the hearing on the temporary injunction, June 16, was held. But the men drew up their demands and were ready for the court decision which they felt would be finally against them.

The Wahoo Valley was stirred deeply by the premonitions of the coming strike. It was proud of its record for industrial peace, and the prospect of war in the Valley overturned all its traditions.

Market Street had its profound reaction, too. Market Street and the Valley, each in its own way, felt the dreaded turmoil coming, knew what commercial disaster the struggle meant, but Market Street was timid and powerless and panic-stricken. Yet life went on. In the Valley there were births and deaths and marriages, and on the hill in Harvey, Mrs. Bedelia Nesbit was working out her plans to make over the Nesbit house, while Lila, her granddaughter, was fluttering about in the seventh Heaven, for she was living under the same sky and sun and stars that bent over Kenyon, her lover, home from Boston for the Morton-Adams wedding. He might be hailed as a passing ship once or twice a day, if she managed to time her visits to Market Street properly, or he might be seen from the east veranda of her home at the proper hour, and there was a throb of joy that blotted out all the rest of the pale world. There was one time; two times indeed they were, and a hope of a third, when slipping out from under the shadow of her grandmother's belligerent plumes, Lila had known the actual fleeting touch of hands; the actual feasting of eyes and the quick rapture of meeting lips at a tryst. And when Mrs. Nesbit left for Minneapolis to consult an architect, and to be gone two weeks—Harvey and the Valley and the strike slipped so far below the sky-line of the two lovers that they were scarcely aware that such things were in the universe.

Kenyon could not see even the grim cast of decision mantling Grant's face. Day by day, while the votes assembled which ordered the strike, the deep abiding purpose of Grant Adams's soul rose and stood ready to master him. He and the men seemed to be coming to their decision together. As the votes indicated by a growing majority their determination, in a score of ways Grant made it evident to those about him, that for him time had fruited; the day was ready and the hour at hand for his life plans to unfold. Those nearest him knew that the season of debate for Grant Adams had passed. He was like one whose sails of destiny are set and who longs to put out into the deep and let down his nets. So he passed the long days impatiently until the hearing of the injunction in little Ben's suit arrived, and every day burned some heavier line into his face that recorded the presence of the quenchless fire of purpose in his heart.

A smiling, affable man was Judge Thomas Van Dorn in his court the morning of June 16. He had his ticket bought for Chicago and a seat in the great convention of his party assured. He walked through the court room, rather dapperly. He put his high silk hat on the bench beside him, by way of adding a certain air of easy informality to the proceedings. His red necktie brought out every thin wrinkle in his burnished brown face and upon the pink brow threaded by a chain lightning of a scar. The old mushy, emotional voice of his youth and maturity had thickened, and he talked loudly. He listened to arguments of counsel. Young Joe Calvin, representing the Fuel Company, was particularly eloquent. Henry Fenn knew that his case was hopeless, but made such reply as he could.

"Well," cut in the court before Fenn was off his feet at the close of his argument, "there's nothing to your contention. The court is familiar with those cases, cited by counsel. Either the constitution means what it says or it doesn't. This court is willing to subscribe to a fund to pay this Bowman child a just compensation. This is a case for charity and the company is always generous in its benevolence. The Socialists may have the state courts, and the people are doubtless crazy—but this court will uphold the constitution. The injunction is made permanent. The court stands adjourned."

The crowd of laborers in the court room laughed in the Judge's face. They followed Grant Adams, who with head bowed in thought walked slowly to the street car. "Well, fellows," said Grant, "here's the end. As it stands now, the law considers steel and iron in machinery more sacred than flesh and blood. The court would have allowed them to appropriate money for machines without due process of law; but it enjoins them from appropriating money for flesh and blood." He was talking to the members of the Valley Labor Council as they stood waiting for a car. "We may as well miss a car and present our demands to the Calvins. The sooner we get this thing moving, the better."

Ten minutes later the Council walked into the office of Calvin and Calvin. There sat Joseph Calvin, the elder, a ratty little man still, with a thin stringy neck and with a bald head. His small, mousy eyes blinked at the workmen. He was exceedingly polite. He admitted that he was attorney for the owners' association in the Valley, that he could if he chose speak for them in any negotiations they might desire to make with their employees, but that he was authorized to say that the owners were not ready to consider or even to receive any communication from the men upon any subject—except as individual employees might desire to confer with superintendents or foremen in the various mines and mills.

So they walked out. At labor headquarters in South Harvey, Nathan Perry came sauntering in.

"Well, boys—let's have your agreement—I think I know what it is. We're ready to sign."

In an hour men were carrying out posters to be distributed throughout the Valley, signed by Grant Adams, chairman of the Wahoo Valley Trades Workers' Council. It read:

STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE

The managers of our mines and mills in the Wahoo Valley have refused to confer with representatives of the workers about an important matter. Therefore we order a general strike of all workers in the mines and mills in this District. Workers before leaving will see that their machines are carefully oiled, covered, and prepared to rest without injury. For we claim partnership interest in them, and should protect them and all our property in the mines and mills in this Valley. During this strike, we pledge ourselves.

To orderly conduct.

To keep out of the saloons.

To protect our property in the mines and mills.

To use our influence to restrain all violence of speech or conduct. And we make the following demands:

First. That prices of commodities turned out in this district shall not be increased to the public as a result of concessions to us in this strike, and to that end we demand.

Second. That we be allowed to have a representative in the offices of all concerns interested, said representative to have access to all books and accounts, guaranteeing to labor such increases in wages as shall be evidently just, allowing 8 per cent. dividends on stock, the payment of interest on bonds, and such sums for upkeep, maintenance, and repairs as shall not include the creation of a surplus or fund for extensions.

Third, we demand that the companies concerned shall obey all laws enacted by the state or nation to improve conditions of industry until such laws have been passed upon by the supreme courts of the state and of the United States.

Fourth, we demand that all negotiations between the employers and the workers arising out of the demands shall be conducted on behalf of the workers by the Trades Workers' Council of the Wahoo Valley or their accredited representatives.

During this strike we promise to the public righteous peace; after the strike we promise to the managers of the mines and mills efficient labor, and to the workers always justice.

STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE

At two o'clock that June afternoon the whistle of the big engine in the smelter in South Harvey, the whistle in the glass factory at Magnus, and the siren in the cement mill at Foley blew, and gradually the wheels stopped, the machines were covered, the fires drawn, the engines wiped and covered with oil, and the men marched out of all the mills and mines and shops in the district. There was no uproar, no rioting, but in an hour all the garden patches in the Valley were black with men. The big strike of the Wahoo Valley was on.



CHAPTER XLVI

WHEREIN GRANT ADAMS PREACHES PEACE AND LIDA BOWMAN SPEAKS HER MIND

A war, being an acute stage of discussion about the ownership of property, is a war even though "the lead striker calls it a strike," and even though he proposes to conduct the acute stage of the discussion on high moral grounds. The gentleman who is being relieved of what he considers at the moment his property, has no notion of giving it up without a struggle, no matter how courteously he is addressed, nor upon what exalted grounds the discussion is ranging. It is a world-old mistake of the Have-nots to discount the value which the Haves put upon their property. The Have-nots, generally speaking, hold the property under discussion in low esteem. They have not had the property in question. They don't know what a good thing it is—except in theory. But the Haves have had the property and they will fight for it, displaying a degree of feeling that always surprises the Have-nots, and naturally weakens their regard for the high motives and disinterested citizenship of the Haves.

Now Grant Adams in the great strike in the Wahoo Valley was making the world-old mistake. He was relying upon the moral force of his argument to separate the Haves from their property. He had cared little for the property. The poor never care much for property—otherwise they would not be poor. So Grant and his followers in the Valley—and all over the world for that matter,—(for they are of the great cult who believe in a more equitable distribution of property, through a restatement of the actual values of various servants to society), went into their demands for partnership rights in the industrial property around them, in a sublime and beautiful but untenable faith that the righteousness of their cause would win it. The afternoon when the men walked out of the mines and mills and shops, placards covered the dead walls of the Valley and the hired billboards in Harvey setting forth the claims of the men. They bought and paid for twenty thousand copies of Amos Adams's Tribune, and distributed it in every home in the district, setting forth their reasons for striking. Great posters were spread over the town and in the Valley declaring "the rule of this strike is to be square, and to be square means that the strikers will do as they would be done by. There will be no violence."

Now it would seem that coming to the discussion with these obviously high motives, and such fair promises, the strikers would have been met by similarly altruistic methods. But instead, the next morning at half past six, when a thousand strikers appeared bearing large white badges inscribed with the words, "We stand for peace and law and order," and when the strikers appeared before the entrance to the shaft houses and the gates and doors of the smelters and mills, to beg men and women not to fill the vacant places at the mills and mines, the white-badged brigade was met with five hundred policemen who rudely ordered the strikers to move on.

The Haves were exhibiting feeling in the matter. But the mines and mills did not open; not enough strike-breakers appeared. So that afternoon, a great procession of white-badged men and white-clad women and children, formed in South Harvey, and, headed by the Foley Brass Band, marched through Market Street and for five miles through the streets of Harvey singing. Upon a platform carried by eight white-clad mothers, sat little Ben Bowman swathed in white, waving a white flag in his hand, and leading the singing. Over the chair on which he sat were these words on a great banner. "For his legal rights and for all such as he we demand that the law be enforced."

For two hours the procession wormed through Harvey. The streets were crowded to watch it. It made its impression on the town. The elder Calvin watched it with Mayor Ahab Wright, in festal side whiskers, from the office of Calvin & Calvin. Young Joe Calvin from time to time came and looked over their shoulders. But he was for the most part too busily engaged, making out commissions for deputy sheriffs and extra policemen, to watch the parade. As the parade came back headed for South Harvey, the ear of the young man caught a familiar tune. He watched Ahab Wright and his father to see if they recognized it. The placid face of the Mayor betrayed no more consciousness of the air than did his immaculate white necktie. The elder Calvin's face showed no appreciative wrinkles. The band passed down the street roaring the battle hymn of labor that has become so familiar all over the world. The great procession paused uncovered in the street, while Little Ben waved his flag and raised his clear, boyish voice with its clarion note and sang, as the procession waved back. And at the spectacle of the crippled child, waving his one little arm, and lifting his voice in a lusty strain, the sidewalk crowd cheered and those who knew the tune joined.

Young Joe Calvin stood with his hands on the shoulders of the two sitting men. "Mr. Mayor, do you know that tune?" said Young Joe.

Mr. Mayor, whose only secular tune was "Yankee Doodle," confessed his ignorance. "Listen to the words," suggested Young Joe. Old Joe put his hand to his right ear. Ahab Wright leaned forward, and the words of the old, old cry of the Reds of the Midi came surging up:

"To arms! to arms!—ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe! March on! March on! all hearts resolved On victory or death."

When Ahab Wright caught the words he was open mouthed with astonishment. "Why—why," he cried, "that—why, that is sedition. They're advocating murder!"

Young Joe Calvin's face did not betray him, and he nodded a warning head. Old Joe looked the genuine consternation which he felt.

"We can't have this, Ahab—this won't do—a few days of this and we'll have bloodshed."

It did not occur to Ahab Wright that he had been singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and "I Am a Soldier of the Cross," and "I'll Be Washed in the Blood of the Lamb," all of his pious life, without ever meaning anything particularly sanguinary. He heard the war song of the revolution, and being a literal and peth-headed man, prepared to defend the flag with all the ardor that had burned in John Kollander's heart for fifty years.

"I tell you, Mr. Mayor, we need the troops. The Sheriff agrees with me—now you hear that," said young Joe. "Will you wait until some one is killed or worse, until a mine is flooded, before sending for them?"

"You know, Ahab," put in old Joe, "the Governor said on the phone this morning, not to let this situation get away from you."

The crowd was joining the singing. The words—the inspiring words of the labor chant had caught the people on the sidewalk, and a great diapason was rising:

"March on! March on!—all hearts resolved On victory or death."

"Hear that—hear that, Ahab!" cried old Joe. "Why, the decent people up town here are going crazy—they're all singing it—and that little devil is waving a red flag with the white one!"

Ahab Wright looked and was aghast. "Doesn't that mean rebellion—anarchy—and bloodshed?" he gasped.

"It means socialism," quoth young Joe, laconically, "which is the same thing."

"Well, well! my! my! Dear me," fretted Ahab, "we mustn't let this go on."

"Shall I get the Governor on the phone—you know we have the Sheriff's order here—just waiting for you to join him?" asked young Joe.

The Haves were moving the realm of the discussion about their property from pure reason to the baser emotions.

"Look, look!" cried the Mayor. "Grant Adams is standing on that platform—and those women have to hold him up—it's shameful. Listen!"

"I want to say to my old neighbors and friends here in Harvey," cried Grant, "that in this strike we shall try with all our might, with all our hearts' best endeavors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Our property in the mines and mills in this Valley, we shall protect, just as sacredly as our partners on Wall Street would protect it. It is our property—we are the legatees of the laborers who have piled it up. You men of Harvey know that these mines represent little new capital. They were dug with the profits from the first few shafts. The smelters rose from the profits of the first smelters in the district. Where capital has builded with fresh investment—we make no specific claim, but where capital has builded here in this district from profits made in the district—profits made by reason of cheating the crippled and the killed, profits made by long deadly hours of labor, profits made by cooking men's lungs on the slag dump, profits made by choking men to death, unrequited, in cement dust, profits sweated out of the men at the glass furnaces—where capital has appropriated unjustly, we expect to appropriate justly. We shall take nothing that we do not own. This is the beginning of the rise of the Democracy of Labor—the dawn of the new day." He waved his arm and his steel claw and chanted:

"March on!—March on!—all hearts resolved,"

And in a wave of song the response came

"To victory or death."

Grant Adams flaunted his black slouch hat; then he sprang from the platform, and hurried to the front of the procession. The band struck up a lively tune and the long trail of white-clad women and white-badged men became animate.

"Well, Ahab—you heard that? That is rebellion," said old Joe, squinting his mole-like eyes. "What are you going to do about that—as the chief priest of law and order in this community?"

Five minutes later Ahab Wright, greatly impressed with the dignity of his position, and with the fact that he was talking to so superior a person as a governor, was saying:

"Yes, your excellency—yes, I wanted to tell you of our conditions here in the Valley. It's serious—quite serious." To the Governor's question the Mayor replied:

"No—no—not yet, but we want to prevent it. This man Adams—Grant Adams, you've heard about him—"

And then an instant later he continued, "Yes—that's the man, Governor—Dr. Nesbit's friend. Well, this man Adams has no respect for authority, nor for property rights, and he's stirring up the people."

Young Joe Calvin winked at his father and said during the pause,

"That's the stuff—the old man's coming across like a top."

Ahab went on: "Exactly—'false and seditious doctrines,' and I'm afraid, Governor, that it will be wise to send us some troops."

The Calvins exchanged approving nods, and young Joe, having the enthusiasm of youth in his blood, beat his desk in joyous approval of the trend of events.

"Oh, I don't know as to that," continued Ahab, answering the Governor. "We have about four thousand men—perhaps a few more out. You know how many troops can handle them."

"Tell him we'll quarter them in the various plants, Ahab," cut in old Joe, and Ahab nodded as he listened.

"Well, don't wait for the tents," he said. "Our people will quarter the men in the buildings in the centers of the disturbance. Our merchants can supply your quartermaster with everything. We have about a thousand policemen and deputy sheriffs—"

While the Mayor was listening to the Governor, Calvin senior said to his son, "Probably we'd better punch him up with that promise about the provo marshal," and young Joe interrupted:

"And, Mr. Mayor, don't forget to remind him of the promise he made to Tom Van Dorn,—about me."

Ahab nodded and listened. "Wait," he said, putting his hand over the telephone receiver, and added in a low voice to those in the room: "He was just talking about that and thinks he will not proclaim martial law until there is actual violence—which he feels will follow the coming of the troops, when the men see he is determined. He said then that he expected Captain Calvin of the Harvey Company to take charge, and the Governor will speak to the other officers about it." Ahab paused a moment for further orders. "Well," said the elder Calvin, "I believe that's all."

"Will there be anything else to-day, Joe?" asked Ahab, unconsciously assuming his counter manner to young Joe Calvin, who replied without a smile:

"Well—no—not to-day, thank you," and Ahab went back to the Governor and ended the parley.

The Times the next morning with flaring headlines announced that the Governor had decided to send troops to the Wahoo Valley to protect the property in the mines and mills for the rightful owners and to prevent any further incendiary speaking and rioting such as had disgraced Market Street the day before. In an editorial the Governor was advised to proclaim martial law, as only the strictest repression would prevent the rise of anarchy and open rebellion to the authorities.

The troops came on the early morning trains, and filed into the sheds occupied by the workmen before the strike. The young militiamen immediately began pervading South Harvey, Foley and Magnus, and when the strikers lined up before the gates and doors of their former working places at seven o'clock that morning they met a brown line of youths—devil-may-care young fellows out for a lark, who liked to prod the workmen with their bayonets and who laughingly ordered the strikers to stop trying to keep the strike-breakers from going to work. The strikers were bound by their pledges to the Trades Council not to touch the strike-breakers under any circumstances. The strikers—white-badged and earnest-faced—made their campaign by lining up five on each side of a walk or path through which the strike-breakers would have to pass to their work, and crying:

"Help us, and we'll help you. Don't scab on us—keep out of the works, and we'll see that you are provided for. Join us—don't turn your backs on your fellow workers."

They would stretch out their arms in mute appeal when words failed, and they brought dozens of strike-breakers away from their work. And on the second morning of the strike not a wheel turned in the district.

All morning Grant Adams moved among the men. He was a marked figure—with his steel claw—and he realized that he was regarded by the militiamen as an ogre. A young militiaman had hurt a boy in Magnus—pricked him in the leg and cut an artery. Grant tried to see the Colonel of the company to protest. But the soldier had been to the officer with his story, and Grant was told that the boy attacked the militiaman—which, considering that the boy was a child in his early teens and the man was armed and in his twenties, was unlikely. But Grant saw that his protests would not avail. He issued a statement, gave it to the press correspondents who came flocking in with the troops, and sent it to the Governor, who naturally transferred it back to the militiamen.

In the afternoon the parade started again—the women and children in white, and the men in white coats and white working caps. It formed on a common between Harvey and South Harvey, and instead of going into Harvey turned down into the Valley where it marched silently around the quiet mills and shafts and to the few tenements where the strike-breakers were lodged. A number of them were sitting at the windows and on the steps and when the strikers saw the men in the tenements, they raised their arms in mute appeal, but spoke no word. Down the Valley the procession hurried and in every town repeated this performance. The troops had gathered in Harvey and were waiting, and it was not until after three o'clock that they started after the strikers. A troop of cavalry overtook the column in Foley, and rode through the line a few times, but no one spoke, and the cavalrymen rode along the line but did not try to break it. So the third day passed without a fire in a furnace in the district.

That night Grant Adams addressed the strikers in Belgian Hall in South Harvey, in Fraternity Hall in Magnus and on a common in Foley. The burden of his message was this: "Stick—stick to the strike and to our method. If we can demonstrate the fact that we have the brains to organize, to abandon force, to maintain ourselves financially, to put our cause before our fellow workers so clearly that they will join us—we can win, we can enter into the partnership in these mills that is ours by right. The Democracy of Labor is a Democracy of Peace—only in peace, only by using the higher arts of peace under great provocation may we establish that Democracy and come into our own. Stick—stick—stick to the strike and stick to the ways of peace. Let them rally to their Colonels and their tin soldiers—and we shall not fear—for we are gathered about the Prince of Peace."

The workmen always rose to this appeal and in Foley where the Letts had worked in the slag-dump, one of them, who did not quite understand the association of words implied by the term the Prince of Peace, cried:

"Hurrah for Grant, he is the Prince of Peace," and the good natured crowd laughed and cheered the man's mistake.

But the Times the next morning contained this head:

"Shame on Grant Adams, Trying to Inflame Ignorant Foreigners. Declares he is the Prince of Peace and gets Applause from his Excited Dupes—Will he Claim to be Messiah?"

It was a good story—from a purely sensational viewpoint, and it was telegraphed over the country, that Grant Adams, the labor leader, was claiming to be a messiah and was rallying foreigners to him by supernatural powers. The Times contained a vicious editorial calling on all good citizens to stamp out the blasphemous cult that Adams was propagating. The editorial said that the authorities should not allow such a man to speak on the streets maintained by tax-payers, and that with the traitorous promises of ownership of the mines and mills backing up such a campaign, rebellion would soon be stalking the street and bloodshed such as had not been seen in America for a generation would follow. The names which the Times called Grant Adams indicated so much malice, that Grant felt encouraged, and believed he had the strike won, if he could keep down violence. So triumph flambeaued itself on his face. For two peaceful days had passed. And peace was his signal of victory.

But during the night a trainload of strike-breakers came from Chicago. They were quartered in the railroad yards, and Grant ordered a thousand pickets out to meet the men at daybreak. Grant called out the groups of seven and each lodging house, tenement and car on the railroad siding was parceled out to a group. Moreover, Grant threw his army into action by ordering twenty groups into Sands Park, through which the strike-breaking smelter men would pass after the pickets had spoken to the strike-breakers in their door yards. Lining the park paths, men stood in the early morning begging working men not to go into the places made vacant by the strike. In addition to this, he posted other groups of strikers to stand near the gates and doors of the working places, begging the strike-breakers to join the strikers.

Grant Adams, in his office, was the motive power of the strike. By telephone his power was transferred all over the district. Violet Hogan and Henry Fenn were with him. Two telephones began buzzing as the first strikers went into Sands Park. Fenn, sitting by Grant, picked up the first transmitter; Violet took the other. She took the message in shorthand. Fenn translated a running jargon between breaths.

"Police down in Foley—Clubbing the Letts.—No bloodshed.—They are running back to their gardens."

"Tell the French to take their places," said Grant—"There are four French sevens—tell him to get them out right away—but not to fight the cops. Militia there?"

"No," answered Fenn, "they are guarding the mill doors, and this happened in the streets near the lodging houses."

"Mr. Adams," said Violet, reading, "there's some kind of a row in Sands Park. The cavalry is there and Ira Dooley says to tell you to clear out the Park or there will be trouble."

"Get the boys on the phone, Violet, and tell them I said leave the Park, then, and go to the shaft houses in Magnus—but to march in silence—understand?"

Fenn picked up the transmitter again, "What's that—what's that—" he cried. Then he mumbled on, "He says the cops have ax-handles and that down by the smelters they are whacking our people right and left—Three in an ambulance?—The Slavs won't take it? Cop badly hurt?" asked Fenn.

Grant Adams groaned, and put his head in his hand, and leaned on the desk. He rose up suddenly with a flaming face and said: "I'm going down there—I can stop it."

He bolted from the room and rattled down the stairs. In a minute he came running up. "Violet—" he called to the woman who was busy at the telephone—"shut that man off and order a car for me quick—they've stolen my crank and cut every one of my tires. For God's sake be quick—I must get down to those Slavs."

In a moment Violet had shut off her interviewer, and was calling the South Harvey Garage. Henry Fenn, busy with his phone, looked up with a drawn face and cried:

"Grant—the Cossacks—the Cossacks are riding down those little Italians in Sands Park—chasing them like dogs from the paths—they say the cavalry is using whips!"

Grant stood with bowed head and arched shoulders listening. The muscles of his jaw contracted, and he snapped his teeth.

"Any one hurt?" he asked. Fenn, with the receiver to his ear went on, "The Dagoes are not fighting back—the cavalrymen are shooting in the air, but—the lines are broken—the scabs are marching to the mines through a line of soldiers—we've stopped about a third from the cars—they are forming at the upper end of the Park—our men, they—"

"Good-by," shouted Grant, as he heard a motor car whirring in the distance.

Turning out of the street he saw a line of soldiers blocking his way. He had the driver turn, and at the next corner found himself blocked in. Once more he tried, and again found himself fenced in. He jumped from the car, and ran, head down, toward the line of young fellows in khaki blocking the street. As he came up to them he straightened up, and, striking with his hook a terrific blow, the bayonet that would have stopped him, Grant caught the youth's coat in the steel claw, whirled him about and was gone in a second.

He ran through alleys and across commons until he caught a street car for the smelters. Here he heard the roar of the riot. He saw the new ax-handles of the policemen beating the air, and occasionally thudding on a man's back or head. The Slavs were crying and throwing clods and stones. Grant ran up and bellowed in his great voice:

"Quit it—break away—there, you men. Let the cops alone. Do you want to lose this strike?"

A policeman put his hand on Grant's shoulder to arrest him. Grant brushed him aside.

"Break away there, boys," he called. The Slavs were standing staring at him. Several bloody faces testified to the effectiveness of the ax-handles.

"Stand back—stand back. Get to your lines," he called, glaring at them. They fell under his spell and obeyed. When they were quiet he walked over to them, and said gently:

"It's all right, boys—grin and bear it. We'll win. You couldn't help it—I couldn't either." He smiled. "But try—try next time." The strike-breakers were huddled back of the policemen.

"Men," he shouted to the strike-breakers over the heads of the policemen, "this strike is yours as well as ours. We have money to keep you, if you will join us. Come with us—comrades—Oh, comrades, stand with us in this fight! Go in there and they'll enslave you—they'll butcher you and kill you and offer you a lawsuit for your blood. We offer you justice, if we win. Come, come," he cried, "fellow workers—comrades, help us to have peace."

The policemen formed a line into the door of the shaft house. The strike-breakers hesitated. Grant approached the line of policemen, put up his arm and his maimed hand, lifted his rough, broken face skyward and cried, "O—O—O, God, pour Thy peace into their hearts that they may have mercy on their comrades."

A silence fell, the strike-breakers began to pass through the police lines to join the strikers. At first only one at a time, then two. And then, the line broke and streamed around the policemen. A great cheer went up from the street, and Grant Adams's face twitched and his eyes filled with tears. Then he hurried away.

It was eight o'clock and the picketing for the day was done, when Grant reached his office.

"Well," said Fenn, who had Violet's notes before him, "it's considerably better than a dog fall. They haven't a smelter at work. Two shafts are working with about a third of a force, and we feel they are bluffing. The glass works furnaces are cold. The cement mills are dead. They beat up the Italians pretty badly over in the Park."

The Times issued a noon extra to tell of the incident in front of the smelter, and expatiated upon the Messianic myth. A tirade against Grant Adams in black-faced type three columns wide occupied the center of the first page of the extra, and in Harvey people began to believe that he was the "Mad Mullah" that the Times said he was.

When Dr. Nesbit drove his electric home that noon, he found his daughter waiting for him. She stood on the front porch, with a small valise beside her. She was dressed in white and her youthful skin, fresh lips, glowing eyes and heightened color made her seem younger than the woman of forty that she was. Her father saw in her face the burning purpose to serve which had come to indicate her moments of decision. The Doctor had grown used to that look of decision and he knew that it was in some way related to South Harvey and the strike. For during her years of work in the Valley, its interests had grown to dominate her life. But the Valley and its interests had unfolded her soul to its widest reach, to its profoundest depths. And in her features were blazoned, at times, all the love and joy and strength that her life had gathered. These were the times when she wore what her father called "the Valley look." She had "the Valley look" in her face that day when she stood waiting for her father with the valise beside her—a beautiful woman.

"Father—now don't stop me, dear. I'm going to Grant. Mother will be home in a few days. I've told Lila to stay with Martha Morton when you are not here. It's always secure and tranquil up here, you know. But I'm going down in the Valley. I'm going to the strike."

"Going to the strike?" repeated her father.

"Yes," she answered, turning her earnest eyes upon him as she spoke. "It's the first duty I have on earth—to be with my people in this crisis. All these years they have borne me up; have renewed my faith; they have given me courage. Now is my turn, father. Where they go, I go also." She smiled gently and added, "I'm going to Grant."

She took her father's hands. "Father—Oh, my good friend—you understand me—Grant and me?—don't you? Every man in the crisis of his life needs a woman. I've been reading about Grant in the papers. I can see what really has happened. But he doesn't understand how what they say happens, for the next few days or weeks or months, while this strike is on, is of vastly more importance than what really happens. He lacks perspective on himself. A woman, if she is a worthy friend—gives that to a man. I'm going to Grant—to my good friend, father, and stand with him—very close, and very true, I hope!"

Trouble moved over the Doctor's face in a cloud. "I don't know about Grant, Laura," he said. "All this Messiah and Prince of Peace tomfoolery—and—"

"Why, you know it never happened, don't you, father? You know Grant is not a fool—nor mad?"

"Oh, I suppose so, Laura—but he approximates both at times," piped the father raspingly.

"Father—listen here—listen to me, dear. I know Grant—I've known him always. This is what is the matter with Grant. I don't think one act in all his life was based on a selfish or an ulterior motive. He has spent his life lavishly for others. He has given himself without let or hindrance for his ideals—he gave up power and personal glory—all for this cause of labor. He has been maimed and broken for it—has failed for it; and now you see what clouds are gathering above him—and I must go to him. I must be with him."

"But for what good, Laura?" asked her father impatiently.

"For my own soul's good and glory, dear," she answered solemnly. "To live my faith; to stand by the people with whom I have cast my lot; to share the great joy that I know is in Grant's heart—the joy of serving; to triumph in his failure if it comes to that!—to be happy—with him, as I know him no matter what chance and circumstance surround him. Oh—father—"

She looked up with brimming eyes and clasped his hand tightly while she cried: "I must go—Oh, bless me as I go—" And the father kissed her forehead.

An hour later, while Grant Adams, in his office, was giving directions for the afternoon parade a white-clad figure brightened the doorway.

"Well, Grant, I have come to serve," she smiled, "under you."

He turned and rose and took her hands in his one flinty hand and said quietly: "We need you—we need you badly right this minute."

She answered, "Very well, then—I'm ready!"

"Well, go out and work—talk peace, don't let them fight, hold the line calm and we'll win," he said.

She started away and he cried after her, "Come to Belgian Hall to-night—we may need you there. The strike committee and the leader of each seven will be there. It will be a war council."

Out to the works went Laura Van Dorn. Mounted policemen or mounted deputies or mounted militiamen stood at every gate. As the strike-breakers came out they were surrounded by the officers of the law, who marched away with the strangers. The strikers followed, calling upon their fellow workers, stretching out pleading arms to them and at corners where the strikers were gathered in any considerable numbers, the guards rode into the crowd waving their whips. At a corner near the Park a woman stepped from the crowd and cried to the officers:

"That's my boy in there—I've got a right to talk to him."

She started to crowd between the horses, and the policemen thrust her back.

"Karl—Karl," she cried, "you come out of there; what would papa say—and you a scab."

She lifted her arms beseechingly and started toward the youth. A policeman cursed her and felled her with a club.

She lay bleeding on the street, and the strikers stood by and ground their teeth. Laura Van Dorn stooped over the woman, picked her up and helped her to walk home. But as she turned away she saw five men walk out of the ranks of the strike-breakers and join the men on the corner. A cheer went up, and two more came.

Belgian Hall was filled with workers that night—men and women. In front of the stage at a long table sat the strike committee. Before them sat the delegates from the various "locals" and the leaders of the sevens. A thousand men and women filled the hall—men and women from every quarter of the globe. That night they had decided to admit the Jews from the Magnus paint works—the Jews whom the Russians scorned, and the Lettish people distrusted. Behind all of the delegates in a solid row around the wall stood the police, watching Grant Adams. He did not sit with the strike committee but worked his way through the crowd, talking to a group here and encouraging a man or woman there—but always restless, always fearing trouble. It was nine o'clock when the meeting opened by singing "The International." It was sung in twenty tongues, but the chorus swelled up and men and women wept as they sang.

"Oh, the Brotherhood of men Shall be the human race."

Then the delegates reported. A Greek woman told how she had been chased by men on horseback through the woods, in the Park. A Polack man showed a torn hand that had come under an ax-handle. A Frenchman told how he had been pursued by a horseman while going for medicine for his sick child. A Portuguese told how he had brought from the ranks of the strike-breakers a big fellow worker whom he knew in New Jersey. The Germans reported that every one of their men in the Valley was out and working in his garden. Over and over young girls told of insults they had received. A mania of brutality seemed to have spread through the officers of the law. A Scotch miner's daughter showed a tear in her dress made by a soldier's bayonet—

"'In fun,' he said, but I could see na joke."

In all the speeches there was a spirit of camaraderie—of fellowship, of love. "We are one blood now," a Danish miner cried, in broken English, "we are all Americans, and America will be a brotherhood—a brotherhood in the Democracy of Labor, under the Prince of Peace." A great shout arose and the crowd called:

"Grant—Grant—Brother Grant."

But he stood by the table and shook his head. After a girl picket and a woman—one a Welsh girl, the other a Manx miner's mother—had told how they were set upon in the Park by the soldiers, up rose a pale, trembling woman from among the Hungarians, her brown, blotched face and her big body made the men look down or away. She spoke in broken, uncertain English.

"We haf send to picket our men and yet our boys, and they beat them down. We haf our girls send, and they come home crying. But I say to God this evening—Oh, is there nothing for me—for me carrying child, and He whisper yais—these soldiers, he haf wife, he haf mother." She paused and shook with fear and shame. "Then I say to you—call home your man—your girl so young, and we go—we women with child—we with big bellies, filled with unborn—we go—O, my God, He say we go, and this soldier—he haf wife, he haf mother—he will see;—we—we—they will not strike us down. Send us, oh, Grant, Prince of Peace, to the picket line next morning."

Her voice broke and she sat down covering her head with her skirt and weeping in excitement.

"Let me go," cried a clear voice, as a brown-eyed Welsh woman rose. "I know ten others that will go."

"I also," cried a German woman. "Let us organize to-night. We can have two hundred child-bearing women!"

"Yes, men," spoke up a trim-looking young wife from among the glassworkers, "we of old have been sacred—let us see if capital holds us sacred now—before property."

Grant leaned over to Laura and asked, "Would it do? Wouldn't they shame us for it?"

The eyes of Laura Van Dorn were filled with tears. They were streaming down her face.

"Oh, yes," she cried, "no deeper symbol of peace is in the earth than the child-bearing woman. Let her go."

Grant Adams rose and addressed the chair: "Mr. Chairman—I move that all men and all women except those chosen by these who have just spoken, be asked to keep out of the Park to-morrow morning, that all the world may know how sacred we hold this cause and with what weapons of peace we would win it."

So it was ordered, and the crowd sang the International Hymn again, and then the Marseillaise, and went home dreaming high dreams.

As Grant and Laura walked from the hall, the last to leave the meeting, after the women had finished making out their list of pickets, the streets were empty and they met—or rather failed to meet, Mrs. Dick Bowman, with Mugs in tow, who crossed the street obviously to avoid Grant and his companion.

Grant and Laura, walking briskly along and planning the next day's work, passed the smelters where the soldiers were on sentry duty. They passed the shaft houses where Harvey militiamen were bunked and guarded by sentinels. They passed the habiliments of war in a score of peaceful places.

"Grant," cried Laura, "I really think now we'll win—that the strike of peace will prove all that you have lived for."

"But if we fail," he replied, "it proves nothing—except perhaps that it was worth trying, and will be worth trying and trying and trying—until it wins!"

It was half past twelve. Grant Adams, standing before the Vanderbilt House, talking with Henry Fenn, was saying, "Well, Henry, one week of this—one week of peace—and the triumph of peace will be—"

A terrific explosion shut his mouth. Across the night he saw a red glare a few hundred feet away. An instant later it was dark again. He ran toward the place where the glare had winked out. As he turned a corner, he saw stars where there should have been shaft house No. 7 of the Wahoo Fuel Company's mines, and he knew that it had been destroyed. In it were a dozen sleeping soldiers of the Harvey Militia Company, and it flashed through his mind that Lida Bowman at last had spoken.



CHAPTER XLVII

IN WHICH GRANT ADAMS AND LAURA VAN DORN TAKE A WALK DOWN MARKET STREET AND MRS. NESBIT ACQUIRES A LONG LOST GRANDSON-IN-LAW

Grant Adams and Henry Fenn were among the first to arrive at the scene of the explosion. Henry Fenn had tried to stop Grant from going so quickly, thinking his presence at the scene would raise a question of his guilt, but he cried:

"They may need me, Henry—come on—what's a quibble of guilt when a life's to save?"

When they came to the pile of debris, they saw Dick Bowman coming up—barefooted, coatless and breathless. Grant and Fenn had run less than fifteen hundred feet—Dick lived a mile from the shaft house. Grant Adams's mind flashed suspicion toward the Bowmans. He went to Dick across the wreckage and said:

"Oh, Dick—I'm sorry you didn't get here sooner."

"So am I—so am I," cried Dick, craning his long neck nervously.

"Where is Mugs?" asked Grant, as the two worked with a beam over a body—the body of handsome Fred Kollander—lying near the edge of the litter.

"He's home in bed and asleep—and so's his mother, too, Grant, sound asleep."

During the first minutes after the explosion, men near by like Grant and Fenn came running to the scene of the wrecked shaft by the scores, and as Grant and Dick Bowman spoke the streets grew black with men, workmen, policemen, soldiers, citizens, men by the hundreds came hurrying up. The great siren whistles of the water and light plants began to bellow; fire bells and church bells up in Harvey began to ring, and Grant knew that the telephone was alarming the town. Ten minutes after the explosion, while Grant was ordering his men in the crowd to organize for the rescue, a militia colonel appeared, threw a cordon of men about the ruins and the police and soldiers took charge, forcing Grant and his men away. The first few moments after he had been thrust out of the relief work, Grant spent sending his men in the crowd to summon the members of the Council; then he turned and hurried to his office in the Vanderbilt House. For an hour he wrote. Henry Fenn came, and later Laura Van Dorn appeared, but he waved them both to silence, and without telling them what he had written he went with them to the hall where the Valley Council was waiting in a turmoil of excitement. It was after two o'clock. South Harvey was a military camp. Thousands of citizens from Harvey were hurrying about. As he passed along the street, the electric lights showed him little groups about some grief-stricken parent or brother or sister of a missing militiaman. Automobiles were roaring through the streets carrying officers, policemen, prominent citizens of Harvey. Ahab Wright and Joe Calvin and Kyle Perry were in a car with John Kollander who had come down to South Harvey to claim the body of his son, Fred. Grant saw the Sands's car with Morty in it supporting a stricken soldier. The car was halted at the corner by the press of traffic, and as Grant and Laura and Henry passed, Morty said under the din: "Grant—Grant, be careful—they are turning Heaven and earth to find your hand in this; it will be only a matter of days—maybe only hours, until they will have their witnesses hired!"

Grant nodded. The car moved on and Grant and his friends pressed through the throng to the hall where the Valley Council was waiting. There Grant stood and read what he had written. It ran thus:

"For the death by dynamite of the militiamen who perished at midnight in shaft No. 7 of the Wahoo Fuel Company's mines, I take full responsibility. I have assumed a leadership in a strike which caused these deaths. I shirk no whit of my share in this outrage. Yet I preached only peace. I pleaded for orderly conduct. I appealed to the workers to take their own not by force of arms but by the tremendous force of moral right. That ten thousand workers respected this appeal, I am exceedingly proud. That one out of all the ten thousand was not convinced of the justice of our cause and the ultimate triumph by the force of righteousness I am sorry beyond words. I call upon my comrades to witness what a blow to our cause this murder has been and to stand firm in the faith that the strike must win by ways of peace.

"Yet, whoever did this deed was not entirely to blame—however it may cripple his fellow-workers. A child mangled in the mines denied his legal damages; men clubbed for telling of their wrongs to their fellow-laborers who were asked to fill their places; women on the picket line, herded like deer through the park by Cossacks whipping the fleeing creatures mercilessly; these things inflamed the mind of the man who set off the bomb; these things had their share in the murder.

"But I knew what strikes were. I know indeed what strikes still are and what this strike may be. I sorrow with those families whose boys perished by the bomb in shaft house No. 7. I grieve with the families of those who have been beaten and broken in this strike. But by all this innocent blood—blood shed by the working people—blood shed by those who ignorantly misunderstand us, I now beg you, my comrades, to stand firm in this strike. Let not this blood be shed in vain. It may be indeed that the men of the master class here have not descended as deeply as we may expect them to descend. They may feel that more blood must be spilled before they let us come into our own. But if blood is shed again, we must bleed, but let it not be upon our hands.

"Again, even in this breakdown of our high hopes for a strike without violence, I lift my voice in faith, I hail the coming victory, I proclaim that the day of the Democracy of Labor is at hand, and it shall come in peace and good will to all."

When he had finished reading his statement, he sat down and the Valley Council began to discuss it. Many objected to it; others wished to have it modified; still others agreed that it should be published as he had read it. In the end, he had his way. But in the hubbub of the discussion, Laura Van Dorn, sitting near him, asked:

"Grant, why do you take all this on your shoulders? It is not fair, and it is not true—for that matter."

He answered finally: "Well, that's what I propose to do."

He was haggard and careworn and he stared at the woman beside him with determination in his eyes. But she would not give up. Again she insisted: "The people are inflamed—terribly inflamed and in the morning they will be in no mood for this. It may put you in jail—put you where you are powerless."

He turned upon her the stubborn, emotional face that she rarely had seen but had always dreaded. He answered her:

"If anything were to be gained for the comrades by waiting—I'd wait." Then his jaws closed in decision as he said: "Laura, that deed was done in blind rage by one who once risked his life to save mine. Then he acted not blindly but in the light of a radiance from the Holy Ghost in his heart! If I can help him now—can even share his shame with him—I should do it. And in this case—I think it will help the cause to make a fair confession of our weakness."

"But, Grant," cried the woman, "Grant—can't you see that the murder of these boys—these Harvey boys, the boys whose mothers and fathers and sweethearts and young wives and children are going about the streets as hourly witnesses against you and our fellow-workers here—will arouse a mob spirit that is dangerous?"

"Yes—I see that. But if anything can quell the mob spirit, frank, open-hearted confession will do it." He brushed aside her further protests and in another instant was on his feet defending his statement to the Valley Council. Ten minutes later the reporters had it.

At six o'clock in the morning posters covered South Harvey and the whole district proclaiming martial law. They were signed by Joseph Calvin, Jr., provost marshal, and they denied the right of assembly, except upon written order of the provost marshal, declared that incendiary speech would be stopped, forbade parades except under the provost marshal's inspection, and said that offenders would be tried by court-martial for all disobediences to the orders of the proclamation. The proclamation was underscored in its requirements that no meeting of any kind might be held in the district or on any lot or in any building except upon written consent of the owner of the lot or building and with the permission of the provost marshal. Belgian Hall was a rented hall, and the Wahoo Fuel Company controlled most of the available town lots, leaving only the farms of the workers, that were planted thick with gardens, for even the most inoffensive meeting.

And at ten o'clock Grant Adams had signed a counter proclamation declaring that the proclamation of martial law in a time of peace was an usurpation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, and that they must refuse to recognize any authority that abridged the right of free assemblage, a free press, free speech and a trial by jury. Amos Adams sent the workers an invitation to meet in the grove below his house. Grant called a meeting for half-past twelve at the Adams homestead. It was a direct challenge.

The noon extra edition of the Times, under the caption, "The Governor Is Right," contained this illuminating editorial:

"Seven men dead—dynamited to death by Grant Adams; seven men dead—the flower of the youth of Harvey; seven men dead for no crime but serving their country, and Grant Adams loose, poisoning the minds of his dupes, prating about peace in public and plotting cowardly assassination in private. Of course, the Governor was right. Every good citizen of this country will commend him for prompt and vigorous action. In less than an hour after the bomb had sent the seven men of the Harvey Home Guards to eternity, the Governor had proclaimed martial law in this district, and from now on, no more incendiary language, no more damnable riots, miscalled parades will menace property, and no more criminal acts done under the cover of the jury system will disgrace this community under the leadership of this creature Adams.

"In his manifesto pulingly taking the blame for a crime last night so obviously his that mere denial would add blood to the crime itself, Adams says in extenuation that 'women were herded before the Cossacks like deer in the park,' while they were picketing. But he does not say that in the shameful cowardice so characteristic of his leadership in this labor war, he forced, by his own motion, women unfit to be seen in public, much less to fight his battles, under the hoofs of the horses in Sands Park this morning, and if the Greek woman, who claims she was dragooned should die, the fault, the crime of her death in revolting circumstances, will be upon Grant Adams's hands.

"When such a leader followed by blind zealots like the riff-raff who are insanely trailing after this Mad Mullah who claims divine powers—save the mark—when such leaders and such human vermin as these rise in a community, the people who own property, who have built up the community, who have spent their lives making Harvey the proud industrial center that she is—the people who own property, we repeat, should organize to protect it. The Governor suspending while this warlike state exists the right of anarchists who turn it against law and order, the right of assembling, and speech and trial by jury, has set a good example. We hear from good authority that the Adams anarchists are to be aided by another association even more reckless than he and his, and that Greeley county will be flooded by bums and thugs and plug-uglies who will fill our jails and lay the burden of heavy taxes upon our people pretending to defend the rights of free speech.

"A law and order league should be organized among the business men of Harvey to rid the county of these rats breeding social disease, and if courageous hearts are needed, and extraordinary methods necessary—all honest people will uphold the patriots who rally to this cause."

At twelve o 'clock crowds of working people began to swarm into Adams's grove. Five hundred horsemen were lined up at the gate. Around a temporary speaker's stand a squad of policemen was formed. The crowd stood waiting. Grant Adams did not appear. The crowd grew restless; it began to fear that he had been arrested, that there had been some mishap. Laura Van Dorn, sensing the uncertainty and discouragement of the crowd, decided to try to hold it. It seemed to her as she watched the uneasiness rising slowly to impatience in the men and women about her, that it was of much importance—tremendous importance indeed—to hold these people to their faith, not especially in Grant, though to her that seemed necessary, too, but at bottom to hold their faith firm in themselves, in their own powers to better themselves, to rise of their own endeavors, to build upon themselves! So she walked quickly to the policeman before the steps leading to the stand and said smilingly:

"Pardon me," and stepped behind him and was on the stand before he realized that he had been fooled. Her white-clad figure upon the platform attracted a thousand eyes in a second, and in a moment she was speaking:

"I am here to defend our ancient rights of meeting, speaking, and trial by jury." A policeman started for her. She smiled and waved him back with such a dignity of mien that her very manner stopped him.

When he hesitated, knowing that she was a person of consequence in Harvey, she went on: "No cause can thrive until it maintains anew its right to speech, to assemble and to have its day in court before a jury. Every cause must fight this world-old fight—and then if it is a just cause, when it has won those ancient rights—which are not rights at all but are merely ancient battle grounds on which every cause must fight, then any cause may stand a chance to win. I think we should make it clear now that as free-born Americans, no one has a right to stop us from meeting and speaking; no one has a right to deny us jury trials. I believe the time has come when we should ignore rather definitely—" she paused, and turned to the policeman standing beside her, "we should ignore rather finally this proclamation of the provost marshal and should insist rather firmly that he shall try to enforce it."

A policeman stepped suddenly and menacingly toward her. She did not flinch. The dignity of five generations of courtly Satterthwaites rose in her as she gazed at the clumsy officer. She saw Grant Adams coming up at a side entrance to the grove. The policeman stopped. She desired to divert the policeman and the crowd from Grant Adams. The crowd tittering at the quick halt of the policeman, angered him. Again he stepped toward her. His face was reddening. The Satterthwaite dignity mounted, but the Nesbit mind guided her, and she said coldly: "All right, sir, but you must club me. I'll not give up my rights here so easily."

Three officers made a rush for her, grabbed her by the arms, and, struggling, she went off the platform, but she left Grant Adams standing upon it and a cheering crowd saw the ruse.

"I'm here," he boomed out in his great voice, "because 'the woods were man's first temples' and we'll hold them for that sacred right to-day." The police were waiting for him to put his toe across the line of defiance. "We'll transgress this order of little Joe Calvin's—why, he might as well post a trespass notice against snowslides as against this forward moving cause of labor." His voice rose, "I'm here to tell you that under your rights as citizens of this Republic, and under your rights in the coming Democracy of Labor, I bid you tear up these martial law proclamations to kindle fires in your stoves."

He glared at the policemen and held up his hand to stop them as they came. "Listen," he cried, "I'm going to give you better evidence than that against me. I, as the leader of this strike—take this down, Mr. Stenographer, there—I'll say it slowly; I, as the leader of this movement of the Democracy of Labor, as the preacher preaching the era of good will and comradeship all over the earth, bid you, my fellow-workers, meet to preach Christ's workingman's gospel wherever you can hire a hall or rent a lot, to parade your own streets, and to bare your heads to clubs and your breasts to bullets if need be to restore in this district the right of trial by jury in times of peace. And now,"—the crowd roared its approval. He glared defiance at the policemen. He raised his voice above the din, "And now I want to tell you something more. Our property in these mills and mines—" again the crowd bellowed its joyous approval of his words and Grant's face lighted madly, "our property—the property we have earned, we must guard against the violence of the very master class themselves; for under this infernal Russian ukase of little Joe Calvin, the devil only knows what arson and loot and murder—" the crowd howled wildly; a policeman blew his whistle and when the melee was over Grant Adams was in the midst of the blue-coated squad marching toward the gate.

At the gate, on a pawing white horse, sat young Joe Calvin. The crowd, following the officers, came upon the first squad of policemen—the squad that took Laura Van Dorn from the stand. The two squads joined with their prisoners, and back of the officers came the yelling, hooting crowd, pushing the officers along. As the officers came up, the provost marshal cried:

"Turn them over to my men here. Men, handcuff them together." In an instant it was done.

Then the cavalry formed in two lines, and between them marched Laura Van Dorn and Grant Adams, manacled together. Up through the weed-grown commons between South Harvey and the big town they marched under the broiling sun. The crowd trudged after them—trailing behind for the most part, but often running along by the horsemen and calling words of sympathy to Grant or reviling the soldiers.

Down Market Street they all came—soldiers, prisoners and straggling crowd. The town, prepared by telephone for the sight, stood on the streets and hurrahed for Joe Calvin. He had brought in his game, and if one trophy was a trifle out of caste for a prisoner, a bit above her station, so much the worse for her. The blood of the seven dead soldiers was crying for vengeance in Harvey—the middle-class nerve had been touched to the quick—and Market Street hooted at the prisoners, and hailed Joe Calvin on his white charger as a hero of the day.

For the mind of a crowd is a simple mind. It draws no fine distinctions. It has no memory. It enjoys primitive emotions, and takes the most rudimentary pleasures. The mind of the crowd on Market Street in Harvey that bright, hot June day, when Joe Calvin on his white steed at the head of his armed soldiers led Grant Adams and Laura Van Dorn up the street to the court house, saw as plainly as any crowd could see anything that Grant Adams was the slayer of seven mangled men, whose torn bodies the crowd had seen at the undertaker's. It saw death and violation of property rights as the fruit of Grant Adams's revolution, and if this woman, who was of Market Street socially, cared to lower herself to the level of assassins and thugs, she was getting only her deserts.

So Grant and Laura passed through the ranks of men and women whom they knew and saw eyes turned away that might have recognized them, saw faces averted to whom they might have looked for sympathy—and saw what power on a white horse can make of a mediocre man!

But Grant was not interested in power on a white horse, nor was he interested in the woman who marched with him. His face kept turning to the crowd from South Harvey that straggled beside him outside of the line of horsemen about him. Now and then Grant caught the eyes of a leader or of a friend and to such a one he would speak some earnest word of cheer or give some belated order or message. Only once did Laura divert him from the stragglers along the way. It was when Ahab Wright ducked his head and drew down his office window in the second story of the Wright & Perry building. "At least," said Laura, "it's a lesson worth learning in human nature. I'll know how much a smile is worth after this or the mere nod of a head. Not that I need it to sustain me, Grant," she went on seriously, "so far as I'm concerned, but I can feel how it would be to—well, to some one who needed it."

Under the murmur of the crowd, Laura continued: "I know exactly with what emotion pretty little Mrs. Joe Calvin will hear of this episode."

"What?" queried Grant absently. His attention left her again, for the men from South Harvey at whom he was directing volts of courage from his blazing eyes.

"Well—she'll be scared to death for fear mother and I will cut her socially for it! She's dying to get into the inner circle, and she'll abuse little Joe for this—which," smiled Laura, "will be my revenge, and will be badly needed by little Joe." But she was talking to deaf ears.

A street car halted them before Brotherton's store for a minute. Grant looked anxiously in the door way, and saw only Miss Calvin, who turned away her head, after smiling at her brother.

"I wonder where George can be?" asked Grant.

"Don't you know?" replied Laura, looking wonderingly at him. "There's a little boy at their house!"

The crowd was hooting and cheering and the procession was just ready to turn into the court house corner, when Grant felt Laura's quick hand clasp. Grant was staring at Kenyon, white and wild-eyed, standing near them on the curb.

"Yes," he said in a low voice, "I see the poor kid."

"No—no," she cried, "look down the block—see that electric! There comes father, bringing mother back from the depot—Oh, Grant—I don't mind for me, I don't mind much for father—but mother—won't some one turn them up that street! Oh, Grant—Grant, look!"

Less than one hundred feet before them the electric runabout was beginning to wobble unsteadily. The guiding hand was trembling and nervous. Mrs. Nesbit, leaning forward with horror in her face, was clutching at her husband's arm, forgetful of the danger she was running. The old Doctor's eyes were wide and staring. He bore unsteadily down upon the procession, and a few feet from the head of the line, he jumped from the machine. He was an old man, and every year of his seventy-five years dragged at his legs, and clutched his shaking arms.

"Joe Calvin—you devil," he screamed, and drew back his cane, "let her go—let her go."

The crowd stood mute. A blow from the cane cracked on the young legs as the Doctor cried:

"Oh, you coward—" and again lifted his cane. Joe Calvin tried to back the prancing horse away. The blow hit the horse on the face, and it reared, and for a second, while the crowd looked away in horror, lunged above the helpless old man. Then, losing balance, the great white horse fell upon the Doctor; but as the hoofs grazed his face, Kenyon Adams had the old man round the waist and flung him aside. But Kenyon went down under the horse. Calvin turned his horse; some one picked up the fainting youth, and he was beside Mrs. Nesbit in the car a moment later, a limp, unconscious thing. Grant and Laura ran to the car. Dr. Nesbit stood dazed and impotent—an old man whose glory was of yesterday—a weak old man, scorned and helpless. He turned away trembling with a nervous palsy, and when he reached the side of the machine, his daughter, trying to hide her manacled hand, kissed him and said soothingly:

"It's all right, father—young Joe's vexed at something I said down in the Valley; he'll get over it in an hour. Then I'll come home."

"And," gasped Mrs. Nesbit, "he—that whippersnapper," she gulped, "dared—to lay hands on you; to—"

Laura shook her head, to stop her mother from speaking of the handcuff,—"to make you walk through Market Street—while," but she could get no further. The crowd surrounded them. And in the midst of the jostling and milling, the Doctor's instinct rose stronger than his rage. He was fumbling for his medicine case, and trying to find something for Kenyon. The old hands were at the young pulse, and he said unsteadily:

"He'll be around in a few minutes."

Some one in the crowd offered a big automobile. The Doctor got in, waved to his daughter, and followed Mrs. Nesbit up the hill.

"You young upstart," he cried, shaking his fist at Calvin as the car turned around, "I'll be down in ten minutes and see to you!" The provost marshal turned his white steed and began gathering up his procession and his prisoners. But the spell was broken. The mind of the crowd took in an idea. It was that a shameful thing was happening to a woman. So it hissed young Joe Calvin. Such is the gratitude of republics.

In the court house, the provost marshal, sitting behind an imposing desk, decided that he would hold Mrs. Van Dorn under $100 bond to keep the peace and release her upon her own recognizance.

"Well," she replied, "Little Joe, I'll sign no peace bond, and if it wasn't for my parents—I'd make you lock me up."

Her hand was free as she spoke. "As it is—I'm going back to South Harvey. I'll be there until this strike is settled; you'll have no trouble in finding me." She hurried home. As she approached the house, she saw in the yard and on the veranda, groups of sympathetic neighbors. In the hall way were others. Laura hurried into the Doctor's little office just as he was setting Kenyon's broken leg and had begun to bind the splints upon it. Kenyon lay unconscious. Mrs. Nesbit and Lila hovered over him, each with her hands full of surgical bandages, and cotton and medicine. Mrs. Nesbit's face was drawn and anxious.

"Oh, mamma—mamma—I'm so sorry—so sorry—you had to see." The proud woman looked up from her work and sniffed:

"That whippersnapper—that—that—" she did not finish. The Doctor drew his daughter to him and kissed her. "Oh, my poor little girl—they wouldn't have done that ten years ago—"

"Father," interrupted the daughter, "is Kenyon all right?"

"Just one little bone broken in his leg. He'll be out from under the ether in a second. But I'll—Oh, I'll make that Calvin outfit sweat; I'll—"

"Oh, no, you won't, father—little Joe doesn't know any better. Mamma can just forget to invite his wife to our next party—which I won't let her do—not even that—but it would avenge my wrongs a thousand times over."

Lila had Kenyon's hand, and Mrs. Nesbit was rubbing his brow, when he opened his eyes and smiled. Laura and the Doctor, knowing their wife and mother, had left her and Lila together with the awakening lover. His eyes first caught Mrs. Nesbit's who bent over him and whispered:

"Oh, my brave, brave boy—my noble—chivalrous son—"

Kenyon smiled and his great black eyes looked into the elder woman's as he clutched Lila's hand.

"Lila," he said feebly, "where is it—run and get it."

"Oh, it's up in my room, grandma—wait a minute—it's up in my room." She scurried out of the door and came dancing down the stairs in a moment with a jewel on her finger. The grandmother's eyes were wet, and she bent over and kissed the young, full lips into which life was flowing back so beautifully.

"Now—me!" cried Lila, and as she, too, bent down she felt the great, strong arms of her grandmother enfolding her in a mighty hug. There, in due course, the Doctor and Laura found them. A smile, the first that had wreathed his wrinkled face for an hour, twitched over the loose skin about his old lips and eyes.

"The Lord," he piped, "moves in a mysterious way—my dear—and if Laura had to go to jail to bring it—the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—blessed be—"

"Well, Kenyon," the grandmother interrupted the Doctor, stooping to put her fingers lovingly upon his brow, "we owe everything to you; it was fine and courageous of you, son!"

And with the word "son" the Doctor knew and Laura knew, and Lila first of all knew that Bedelia Nesbit had surrendered. And Kenyon read it in Lila's eyes. Then they all fell to telling Kenyon what a grand youth he was and how he had saved the Doctor's life, and it ended as those things do, most undramatically, in a chorus of what I saids, and you saids to me, and I thought, and you did, and he should have done, until the party wore itself out and thought of Lila, sitting by her lover, holding his hands. And then what with a pantomime of eyes from Laura and the Doctor to Mrs. Nesbit, and what with an empty room in a big house, with voices far—exceedingly far—obviously far away, it ended with them as all journeys through this weary world end, and must end if the world wags on.



CHAPTER XLVIII

WHEREIN WE ERECT A HOUSE BUILT UPON A ROCK

That evening in the late twilight, two women stood at the wicket of a cell in the jail and while back of the women, at the end of a corridor, stood a curious group of reporters and idlers and guards, inside the wicket a tall, middle-aged man with stiff, curly, reddish hair and a homely, hard, forbidding face stood behind the bars. The young woman put her hand with the new ring on it through the wicket.

"It's Kenyon's ring—Kenyon's," smiled Lila, and to his questioning look at her mother, the daughter answered: "Yes, grandma knows. And what is more, grandpa told us both—Kenyon and me—what was bothering grandma—and it's all—all—right!"

The happy eyes of Laura Van Dorn caught the eyes of Grant as they gazed at her from some distant landscape of his turbulent soul. She could not hold his eyes, nor bring them to a serious consideration of the occasion. His heart seemed to be on other things. So the woman said: "God is good, Grant." She watched her daughter and cast a glance at the shining ring. Grant Adams heard and saw, but while he comprehended definitely enough, what he saw and heard seemed remote and he repeated:

"God is good—infinitely good, Laura!" His eyes lighted up. "Do you know this is the first strike in the world—I believe, indeed the first enterprise in the world started and conducted upon the fundamental theory that we are all gods. Nothing but the divine spark in those men would hold them as they are held in faith and hope and fellowship. Look at them," he lifted his face as one seeing Heavenly legions, "ten thousand souls, men and women and children, cheated for years of their rights, and when they ask for them in peace, beaten and clubbed and killed, and still they do not raise their hands in violence! Oh, I tell you, they are getting ready—the time must be near." He shook his head in exultation and waved his iron claw.

Laura said gently, "Yes, Grant, but the day always is near. Whenever two or three are gathered—"

"Oh, yes—yes," he returned, brushing her aside, "I know that. And it has come to me lately that the day of the democracy is a spiritual and not a material order. It must be a rising level of souls in the world, and the mere dawn of the day will last through centuries. But it will be nonetheless beautiful because it shall come slowly. The great thing is to know that we are all—the wops and dagoes and the hombres and the guinnies—all gods! to know that in all of us burns that divine spark which environment can fan or stifle—that divine spark which makes us one with the infinite!" He threw his face upward as one who saw a vision and cried: "And America—our America that they think is so sordid, so crass, so debauched with materialism—what fools they are to think it! From all over the world for three hundred years men and women have been hurrying to this country who above everything else on earth were charged with aspiration. They were lowly people who came, but they had high visions; this whole land is a crucible of aspirations. We are the most sentimental people on earth. No other land is like it, and some day—oh, I know God is charging this battery full of His divine purpose for some great marvel. Some time America will rise and show her face and the world will know us as we are!"

The girl, with eyes fascinated by her engagement ring, scarcely understood what the man was saying. She was too happy to consider problems of the divine immanence. There was a little mundane talk of Kenyon and of the Nesbits and then the women went away.

An hour later an old man sitting in the dusk with a pencil in his left hand, was startled to see these two women descending upon him, to tell him the news. He kissed them both with his withered lips, and rubbed the soft cheek of the maiden against his old gray beard.

And when they were gone, he picked up the pencil again, and sat dumbly waiting, while in his heart he called eagerly across the worlds: "Mary—Mary, are you there? Do you know? Oh, Mary, Mary!"

The funeral of the young men killed in the shaft house brought a day of deepening emotion to Harvey. Flags were at half mast and Market Street was draped in crape. The stores closed at the tolling of bells which announced the hour of the funeral services. Two hundred automobiles followed the soldiers who escorted the bodies to the cemetery, and when the bugle blew taps, tears stood in thousands of eyes.

The moaning of the great-throated regimental band, the shrilling of the fife and the booming of the drum; the blare of the bugle that sounded taps stirred the chords of hate, and the town came back from burying its dead a vessel of wrath. In vain had John Dexter in his sermon over Fred Kollander tried to turn the town from its bitterness by preaching from the text, "Ye are members one of another," and trying to point the way to charity. The town would have no charity.

The tragedy of the shaft house and the imprisonment of Grant Adams had staged for the day all over the nation in the first pages of the newspapers an interesting drama. Such a man as Grant Adams was a figure whose jail sentence under military law for defending the rights of a free press, free speech, free assemblage and trial by jury, was good for a first page position in every newspaper in the country—whatever bias its editorial columns might take against him and his cause. Millions of eyes turned to look at the drama. But there were hundreds among the millions who saw the drama in the newspapers and who decided they would like to see it in reality. Being foot loose, they came. So when the funeral procession was hurrying back into Harvey and the policemen and soldiers were dispersing to their posts, they fell upon half a dozen travel-stained strangers in the court house yard addressing the loafers there. Promptly the strangers were haled before the provost marshal, and promptly landed in jail. But other strangers appeared on the streets from time to time as the freight trains came clanging through town, and by sundown a score of young men were in the town lockup. They were happy-go-lucky young blades; rather badly in need of a bath and a barber, but they sang lustily in the calaboose and ate heartily and with much experience of prison fare. One read his paperbound Tolstoy; another poured over his leaflet of Nietzsche, a third had a dog-eared Ibsen from the public library of Omaha, a fourth had a socialist newspaper, which he derided noisily, as it was not his peculiar cult of discontent; while others played cards and others slept, but all were reasonably happy. And at the strange spectacle of men jail-bound enjoying life, Harvey marveled. And still the jail filled up. At midnight the policemen were using a vacant storeroom for a jail. By daybreak the people of the town knew that a plague was upon them.

Every age has its peculiar pilgrims, whose pilgrimages are reactions of life upon the times. When the shrines called men answered; when the new lands called men hastened to them; when wars called the trumpets woke the sound of hurrying feet—always the feet of the young men. For Youth goes out to meet Danger in life as his ancient and ever-beloved comrade. So in that distant epoch that closed half a decade ago, in a day when existence was easy; when food was always to be had for the asking, when a bed was never denied to the weary who would beg it the wide land over, there arose a band of young men with slack ideas about property, with archaic ideas of morality—ideas perhaps of property and morals that were not unfamiliar to their elder comrades of the quest and the joust, and the merry wars. These modern lads, pilgrims seeking their olden, golden comrade Danger, sallied forth upon the highroads of our civilization, and as the grail was found, and the lands were bounded and the journeys over and the trumpets seemed to be forever muffled, these hereditary pilgrims of the vast pretense, still looking for Danger, played blithely at seeking justice. It was a fine game and they found their danger in fighting for free speech, and free assemblage. They were tremendously in earnest about it, even as the good Don Quixote was with his windmills in the earlier, happier days. They were of the blithe cult which wooes Danger in Folly in times of Peace and in treason when war comes.

And so Harvey in its wrath, in its struggle for the divine right of Market Street to rule, Harvey fell upon these blithe pilgrims with a sad sincerity that was worthy of a better cause. And the more the young men laughed, the more they played tricks upon the police, reading the Sermon on the Mount to provoke arrest, reading the Constitution of the United States to invite repression, even reading the riot act by way of diversion for the police, the more did the wooden head of Market Street throb with rage and the more did the people imagine a vain thing.

And when seventy of them had crowded the jail, and their leaders blandly announced that they would eat the taxes all out of the county treasury before they stopped the fight for free speech, Market Street awoke. Eating taxes was something that Market Street could understand. So the police began clubbing the strangers. The pilgrims were meeting Danger, their lost comrade, and youth's blood ran wild at the meeting and there were riots in Market Street. A lodging house in the railroad yards in South Harvey was raided one night—when the strike was ten days old, and as it was a railroadmen's sleeping place, and a number of trainmen were staying there to whom the doctrines of peace and non-resistance did not look very attractive under a policeman's ax-handle—a policeman was killed.

Then the Law and Order League was formed. Storekeepers, clerks, real estate men, young lawyers, the heart of that section of the white-shirted population whom Grant Adams called the "poor plutes," joined this League. And deaf John Kollander was its leader. Partly because of his bereavement men let him lead, but chiefly because his life's creed seemed to be vindicated by events, men turned to him. The bloodshed on Market Street, the murder of a policeman and the dynamiting of the shaft house with their sons inside, had aroused a degree of passion that unbalanced men, and John Kollander's wrath was public opinion dramatized. The police gave the Law and Order League full swing, and John Kollander was the first chief in the city. Prisoners arrested for speaking without a permit were turned over to the Law and Order League at night, and taken in the city auto-truck to the far limits of the city, and there—a mile from the residential section, in the high weeds that fringed the town and confined the country, the Law and Order League lined up under John Kollander and with clubs and whips and sticks, compelled the prisoners to run a gauntlet to the highroad that leads from Harvey. Men were stripped, and compelled to lean over and kiss an American flag—spread upon the ground, while they were kicked and beaten before they could rise. This was to punish men for carrying a red flag of socialism, and John Kollander decreed that every loyal citizen of Harvey should wear a flag. To omit the flag was to arouse suspicion; to wear a red necktie was to invite arrest. It was a merry day for blithe devotees of Danger; and they were taking their full of her in Harvey.

The Law and Order League was one of those strange madnesses to which any community may fall a victim. Kyle Perry and Ahab Wright—with Jasper Adams a nimble echo, church men, fathers, husbands, solid business men, were its leaders.

They endorsed and participated in brutalities, cowardly cruelties at which in their saner moments they could only shudder in horror. But they made Jared Thurston chairman of the publicity committee and the Times, morning after morning, fanned the passions of the people higher and higher. "Skin the Rats," was the caption of his editorial the morning after a young fellow was tarred and feathered and beaten until he lost consciousness and was left in the highway. The editorial under this heading declared that anarchy had lifted its hydra head; that Grant Adams preaching peace in the Valley was preparing to let in the jungle, and that the bums who were flooding the city jail were Adams's tools, who soon would begin dynamiting and burning the town, when it suited his purpose, while his holier-than-thou dupes in the Valley were conducting their goody-goody strike.

Plots of dynamiting were discovered. Hardly a day passed for nearly a week that the big black headlines of the Times did not tell of dynamite found in obviously conspicuous places—in the court house, in the Sands opera house, in the schoolhouses, in the city hall. So Harvey grew class conscious, property conscious, and the town went stark mad. It was the gibbering fear of those who make property of privilege, and privilege of property, afraid of losing both.

But for a week and a day the motive power of the strike was Grant Adams's indomitable will. Hour after hour, day after day he paced his iron floor, and dreamed his dream of the conquest of the world through fellowship. And by the power of his faith and by the example of his imprisonment for his faith, he held his comrades in the gardens, kept the strikers on the picket lines and sustained the courage of the delegates in Belgian Hall, who met inside a wall of blue-coated policemen. The mind of the Valley had reached a place where sympathy for Grant Adams and devotion to him, imprisoned as their leader, was stronger than his influence would have been outside. So during the week and a day, the waves of hate and the winds of adverse circumstance beat upon the house of faith, which he had builded slowly through other years in the Valley, and it stood unshaken.