It was not long until the idle workmen began to feel the want of their pay envelopes. The grocers and butchers were as dependent upon those pay envelopes as were the workmen themselves.

The winter was coming on. There was a chill in the air. In the homes of the strikers the mothers and their little ones needed not only food but fuel and clothing as well. The crowds at the evening street meetings became more ominous. Through the long, idle days grim, sullen-faced men walked the streets or stood in groups on the corners watching their fellow citizens and muttering in low, guarded tones. Members of the Mill workers' union were openly branded as cowards and traitors to their class. The suffering among the women and children became acute.

But Jake Vodell was a master who demanded of his disciples most heroic loyalty, without a thought of the cost--to them.

McIver put an armed guard about his factory and boasted that he could live without work. The strikers, he declared, could either starve themselves and their families or accept his terms.

The agitator was not slow in making capital of McIver's statements.

The factory owner depended upon the suffering of the women and children to force the workmen to yield to him. Jake Vodell, the self-appointed savior of the laboring people, depended upon the suffering of women and children to drive his followers to the desperate measures that would further his peculiar and personal interests.

Through all this, the Mill workers' union still refused to accept the leadership of this man whose every interest was anti-American and foreign to the principles of the loyal citizen workman. But the fire of Jake Vodell's oratory and argument was not without kindling power, even among John Ward's employees. As the feeling on both sides of the controversy grew more bitter and intolerant, the Mill men felt with increasing force the pull of their class. The taunts and jeers of the striking workers were felt. The cries of "traitor" hurt. The suffering of the innocent members of the strikers' families appealed strongly to their sympathies.

When McIver's imperialistic declaration was known, the number who were in favor of supporting Jake Vodell's campaign increased measurably.

Nearly every day now at some hour of the evening or night, Pete and Captain Charlie, with others from among their union comrades, might have been found in the hut on the cliff in earnest talk with the man in the wheel chair. The active head of the union was Captain Charlie, as his father had been before him, but it was no secret that the guiding counsel that held the men of the Mill steady cane from the old basket maker.

For John Ward the days were increasingly hard. He could not but sense the feeling of the men. He knew that if Jake Vodell could win them, such disaster as the people of Millsburgh had never seen would result. The interest and sympathy of Helen, the comradeship of Captain Charlie, and the strength of the Interpreter gave him courage and hope. But there was nothing that he could do. He felt as he had felt sometimes in France when he was called upon to stand and wait. It was a relief to help Mary as he could in her work among the sufferers. But even this activity of mercy was turned against him by both McIver and Vodell. The factory man blamed him for prolonging the strike and thus working injury to the general business interests of Millsburgh. The strike leader charged him with seeking to win the favor of the working class in order to influence his own employees against, what he called the fight for their industrial freedom.

The situation was rapidly approaching a crisis when Peter Martin and Captain Charlie, returning home from a meeting of their union laid one evening, found the door of the house locked.

The way the two men stood facing each other without a word revealed the tension of their nerves. Captain Charlie's hand shook so that his key rattled against the lock. But when they were inside and had switched on the light, a note which Mary had left on the table for them explained.

The young woman had gone to the Flats in answer to a call for help. John was with her. She had left the note so that her father and brother would not be alarmed at her absence in case they returned home before her.

In their relief, the two men laughed. They were a little ashamed of their unspoken fears.

"We might have known," said Pete, and with the words seemed to dismiss the incident from his mind.

But Captain Charlie did not recover so easily. While his father found the evening paper and, settling himself in an easy-chair by the table, cleaned his glasses and filled and lighted his pipe, the younger man went restlessly from room to room, turning on the lights, turning them off again--all apparently for no reason whatever. He finished his inspection by returning to the table and again picking up Mary's note.

When he had reread the message he said, slowly, "I thought John expected to be at the office to-night."

Something in his son's voice caused the old workman to look at him steadily, as he answered, "John probably came by on his way to the Mill and dropped in for a few minutes."

"I suppose so," returned Charlie. Then, "Father, do you think it wise for sister to be so much with John?"

The old workman laid aside his paper. "Why, I don't know--I hadn't thought much about it, son. It seems natural enough, considering the way you children was all raised together when you was youngsters."

"It's natural enough all right," returned Captain Charlie, and, with a bitterness that was very unlike his usual self, he added, "That's, the hell of it--it's too natural--too human--too right for this day and age."

Pete Martin's mind worked rather slowly but he was fully aroused now--Charlie's meaning was clear. "What makes you think that Mary and John are thinking of each other in that way, son?"

"How could they help it?" returned Captain Charlie. "Sister is exactly the kind of woman that John would choose for a wife. Don't I know what he thinks of the light-headed nonentities in the set that he is supposed to belong to? Hasn't he demonstrated his ideas of class distinctions? It would never occur to him that there was any reason why John Ward should not love Mary Martin. As for sister--when you think of the whole story of their childhood together, of how John and I were all through the war, of how he has been in the Mill since we came home, of their seeing each other here at the house so much, of the way he has been helping her with her work among the poor in the Flats--well, how could any woman like sister help loving him?"

While the older man was considering his son's presentation of the case, Captain Charlie added, with characteristic loyalty, "God may have made finer men than John Ward, but if He did they don't live around Millsburgh."

"Well, then, son," said Peter Martin, with his slow smile, "what about it? Suppose they are thinking of each other as you say?"

Captain Charlie did not answer for a long minute. And the father, watching, saw in that strong young face the shadow of a h............