"I'd rather lose five thousand dollars than do it."

Jack Darcy leaned back in his office-chair. He had just made up the third half-yearly account. It was bad enough. They had known this all along, and had not concealed it from the men. Now it was to be confronted in black and white, with searching eyes.

It was not that they had not made any thing: that would have been endurable, considering the kind of winter. But they had gone back, and eaten up the profits of last year.

"You see, there co-operation comes in," said Bob Winston. "It isn't your loss alone. It's mine and every man's. That's what we agreed to when we went in. Labor and capital should share in the ups and downs. See here, Jack, I've learned a good deal myself. I have more sympathy with employers. Gad! what a pull we've had this winter! If it hadn't been for your fairy godmother"—

"Well, it must be done!" and Jack pulled a long face. "There, it is all ready to print. Now old fellow, we must brace ourselves up for the shot and shell. We'll have to do the fighting all over again. If every man had as easy, philosophical a mind as you, or as sensible, reasonable a one as Cameron, I should not have so many misgivings."

The statement was printed and distributed. The men looked blue and cross. Had they really lost nearly all of last year's balance?

Winston asked them to stop one evening while he went into a slight explanation. He was well armed. Without having a logical mind or parliamentary training, he had a woman's quick intuitions, and often jumped at very decent conclusions with hardly a glance at the premises. He had a way of massing his forces, too, that was very telling.

Now, after what he called a little skirmishing, he read that the Barnable Mills had been running on three-quarter time all winter. Wages had been a trifle lower than with them. Middleham Mills had been closed for two months. He gave the figures of loss to the workmen. Crowley and Dawson had gone into bankruptcy, owing their men in the aggregate more than all Hope Mills had used of last year's profits. Then he read a statement from an eminent manufacturer, that he had used fifty-four thousand dollars of accrued capital rather than turn off his workmen to starve. There had been strikes in several other places, in which the workmen had lost much more than at Yerbury.

"So that our showing, bad as it is, is not the worst," said he. "In the very dullest of times we cast in our lots together, and we must take the good and bad. If you had been living this winter on the private capital of any one man or corporation, you would never have given the matter a thought. You know now, by experience, that capital does not always float on a serene and indolent sea, and gather in treasures for which it has cast out no net. You can appreciate the struggle we have gone through; though, while you have been going along placidly, with the larger weight of care lifted off your shoulders, a man with less energy and pluck than our intrepid pilot, John Darcy, might have let us founder. We help him now with the readiness and good-humor with which we relinquish the profits which were dear to us, and the product of our industry; but he has taken us through a very narrow channel, on a dark night, without striking rock or snag. He and I thank you heartily for your fidelity to our keystone,—co-operation."

"Three cheers for Darcy!" sang out some one in the crowd, "and three cheers for Bob Winston!"

It was given heartily.

"And three cheers for the men of Hope Mills," responded Winston.

They shook hands, and dispersed with a little better feeling. Several of the men seemed to breathe a clearer mental atmosphere immediately.

"You may be sure it's right, whichever way it is," said one man sturdily. "I've known Jack Darcy, boy and man, and his father afore him. He comes of good, clean stock, and, if he says a thing can't be bettered, it can't; and, if it can, he's just the man to do it. Give him a long tether, say I."

Then Winston procured a list of weekly wages ruling in this country, and in many places abroad, the hours of work, and the average cost of living, with the articles in most general use. The mill-men had their flour and coal cheaper, and altogether their winter was proved as satisfactory. This was pasted up in the hall.

The matter was discussed through the town, of course. Some people saw in it a speedy dissolution of the plan,—a plan that never had worked, and never would. Others did not see that this method of getting back part of the men's wages was any better than any other swindling scheme. They never had any faith in Bob Winston,—Darcy might be honest, but he wasn't very bright,—and in five years Winston would own every thing there was in the mill!

Winston laughed over the gossip. Jack could not take it so light-heartedly. He was an earnest, honest reformer, and hated to have things go awry. Winston, not believing there was very much capacity for reform in human nature, did not distress himself.

Ben Hay, and a dozen or so others, did their best with the new cloth, and succeeded in producing a really creditable article. The heads discussed the feasibility of having an auction-sale to clear out some of the piles of goods; then concluded that it might be misconstrued at this present juncture. They could hold on until fall.

But the delightful esprit du corps had vanished. The men did not seem to work with a will. There were moody faces and discourteous greetings, half-insolent nods, and more than one wrangle at the workmen's meeting. Hurd felt anxious and discouraged. Yardley took a low fever, not severe enough to confine him to the house, but it made him irritable, and every sneer or innuendo cut him to the quick. Cameron was a great comfort to Jack, with his queer, wrinkled, grizzled face, and an expression that always puzzled you as to whether nature meant him to laugh or cry.

"I am not surprised," said he, one day, in the office. "I knew we would have to come to just this time. A wife shares your joys and sorrows, gen'ally speaking; but you see there it's a force put, she can't well get away. Other partners like your joys, but they make a wry face over the sorrows, and like to squirm out of them if they can. But it is the only way to train men to the real responsibilities of business. Now, I'm sorry enough to lose, but it stands to reason that times will come better. We're getting through the panic; but after the battle there's some dead to bury, and some wounded to care for, and you see that's tedjus. You can't march straight home, covered with glory. Here's our money in the hospital, first up, then down, and all the doctors in the land tinkering with allopathic doses and homoeopathic doses, and blisters and poultices and remedies, when all it wants is a little honest letting-alone. It doesn't occur to these long-headed doctors that the best way out is to show everybody that we're willing to go to work and pay our debts just as fast as we can. And any fool might know that when you are paying up back debts you can't have much money to sport around on. Never you mind, Jack: we're coming out straight in five years time,—I'll bet my old hat on that!"

Jack wrung his hand warmly.

In May there was quite a jollification over the marriage of two mill-hands. Ben Hay took to wife pretty Rose Connelly; and the coffee-house parlor was denuded of tables and benches, trimmed with evergreens and flowers, and such a merry-making as did one's heart good. There was a bountiful supper, plenty of tea, coffee, and lemonade, dancing, and ice-cream, and the utmost good-humor and good wishes. Connelly pÈre had gone back to his cups, thrown up his situation, come home and stirred up a general "ruction," and had now gone off on a tramp. Ben Hay was to cast his lot with the Connelly household for the present.

"But I tell you what it is, Mr. Darcy," said he, "if any luck comes to Hope Mills, in five years' time I'll have my own little house and garden. I tramped around a bit in the dull times, but I didn't see many prettier places than Yerbury. And, the more I study this business of co-operation, the more I think it will succeed in the end."

Jack experienced a great throb of comfort when he heard such words as these.

Another mill-hand had married Mary Moran. She was not the beauty of Yerbury, by any means, but everybody declared she had improved wonderfully, and that she was the smartest girl in town. Their wedding-party was given at the club-room. It was a larger and rather more boisterous affair; and some of the Morans' warm-hearted Irish friends brought a "dhrop of the craythur" in their pockets, to drink the bride's health. Everybody admitted that there wasn't such another bread-maker in town, unless it was Miss Morgan.

In fact, it was quite astonishing to see what a revolution had been worked in this most important article of diet. The women had learned to distinguish between poor and good flour, and Kilburn's trade in the former had fallen off largely. Of the bread that in Samantha Allen's view "required cast-iron principle to back it up," very little was seen. It had been rather hard work to convince some of the mothers that bread wasn't naturally born into the world heavy and sour, but it had been done.

If Hope Mills failed, the impetus to general knowledge that had been diffused throughout Yerbury would remain and bear fruit. An evening-school had been opened for boys too large to stay at home evenings, and just the right age to fall into temptations. It began with the mill-boys, but it soon drew in others. There was a short session of study, then a talk about some useful art or science. Maverick had treated them to sundry experiments, and explained many general rules of health. Mr. Winston had described Western cities in a vivid and picturesque manner. There had been some astronomy within the reach of all, some philosophy of common every-day things; and it had given the boys ideas above "high, low, Jack."

Darcy tried to find comfort in this when other matters looked dark to him. A little good seed had been sown. The generation growing up would not be quite so dull and brutish. One thing was remarked,—the saloons were not as full. This was laid to dull times, and ascribed to the "revival" of two years ago; but that had not touched the poorer class of Irish and English, who, even during the hardest winter, had managed to find drink-money, when their families were being supported by the relief-store.

Business did "pick up" a little. Prices went lower and lower, however. They looked at their great store of goods with dismay. If the currency question could ever be settled, if we could export more and import less,—though there were people who argued that, the more money we spent abroad, the more it really strengthened us, and money lying idle in our treasury at home was no evidence of prosperity: partly true and partly false reasoning; and, to our astonishment, while we were brilliantly theorizing how to do it, our vain and superficial neighbors across the water, crushed and beaten down by a useless and costly war, and a government of gigantic selfishness, went to work with intrepid courage and industry, and did it.

Meanwhile it must be confessed that Jack's interests were very much divided. The practical part of him never lost sight of the mill. He had the dogged tenacity that holds on with a deathless grip until it conquers, or is wholly beaten. It seemed to him this summer that he had several distinct individualities. He was so deeply interested in Fred and Sylvie! They had slipped into an easy friendship,—a friendship in which neither crossed a certain line, but from widely different motives. Fred's strongest and highest one was honor toward his friend. He began dimly to realize that high culture and refinement of the intellectual senses, a perfect state of outward finish and polish, did not always strengthen the soul's morality and purity. Patience, self-sacrifice, obedience to a creed simpler in words, and yet more comprehensive, than any of his grand philosophies, were needed to form a strong and manful soul. His had been so long bound about with swaddling-clothes, airy, sensuous, fine as a gossamer web, yet strong in beliefs and prejudices. There were times when he felt, through that instinctive knowledge we can never wholly define or explain, that Sylvie Barry belonged to him, that they two could reach a point in mental and artistic life, that she and Jack would never attain. His whole soul cried out for her. With the charm of self-satisfying and blinding theories swept away, he clung passionately to the love that had been only a complacent fancy three years ago. The mere touch of her hand, or glance of her eye, quickened and kindled his entire soul, and made him acutely and agonizingly conscious of the wealth of adoration he had hardly dreamed of possessing. There were moments when her presence filled him with a heavenly satisfaction, when he understood that divine fusion of spirit with spirit in its entirety, when love overcame pride, and he was humble enough to go to her in his poverty.

He tried honestly to crush out the passion, but found that neither will nor duty could destroy love. It rose up and swept imperiously through every pulse of his being, it flooded his heart like a mighty current, it would fain have drowned out his sense of honor to his friend; and he learned presently that it was of no avail to fight battles with this unconquerable foe. He must always love her, therefore he could only bury the passion out of the sight of all other eyes. To him it would be the root of higher resolves and purer motives. When he had made this great sacrifice for his friend, he had offered silently the highest atonement in his power.

But his temptation was not to end so soon. He was to be led through the fire, that he might be purified and ennobled in other virtues beside that of abnegation. He was to learn how sacred a thing strength might become; he was to hold the soft hand on his arm, and never clasp it, to feel the pressure of the dainty fingers, and make no sign; to meet her bewildering smiles with the calmness of a strong spirit held in thrall; to listen to words that seemed cruelly pregnant with the dangerous glamour of hope, and yet to steel his heart against it all. In such times as these we come to believe in a living, loving God, who gathers up these great drops of agony as he "makes up his jewels," and that to him this pearl of inward anguish is above price. Then, of all times, we need to know that he cares for us, that we are not mere atoms floating in unregarded space.

Dr. Maverick decided that his patient must have a change. She had attained a certain amount of physical strength while her brain still lay dormant, utterly exhausted after the great drain upon it. Now it began to act again, and, not being in sympathy with the body, consequently re-acted upon it. She walked about her room a little; she viewed herself in the mirror, a horrid shadow, a mere caricature of her former beauty. Dr. Maverick had tried his best to save her hair; but the fever had burned out its vital essence, making it dry and harsh, so he had uttered his reluctant edict. It was cropped short, and had lost its gloss; her brilliant complexion was a ghostly, sallow, opaque white, her eyes large and melancholy, every feature sharpened into that thin, worn, hungry appearance. "A perfect fright," she said to herself. Why had they not let her die? Of what avail was life to her?

Before her illness, in her desperate impatience with circumstances, she had fancied herself a martyr, with the fagot and stake of a conventional marriage on one hand, and the dreary desert of neglect and enforced seclusion on the other. She had tried to make her own wretched and passionate imaginings consume her very soul. She could rule no longer. She could not exact homage and admiration from society; and, though in her secret soul she despised it, yet what was there to life beside it? No one wanted or needed her. No human being cared for her above all others. She had gone on in ruthless pride, trampling, crushing, and now the great world would be only too glad to pay her back; but it never should. Even in this extreme bitterness of spirit an acknowledgment of that divine rule of love was wrested from her. She had never offered love and tenderness and sympathy to others, and it would not come back to her: it was just and right that it should not.

Why then vegetate through a narrow, dreary existence? She was only a drag on Fred. Even if she were willing to make an essay of work, he would not consent, partly from pride, but still more from that innate sense of chivalry, a part of some men, who would be more cruelly wounded to see a woman dear to them, struggling with distasteful toil, than to make any sacrifice on their own part. If she were a man she would starve in secret before it should be done. David Lawrence had in him some of this pure, nobly generous blood; and many of his finer virtues seemed to have been transmitted to these two children. The mother's individuality had been absorbed by the two elder ones. Gertrude would be just such a woman when she came to her mother's time of life.

Mr. Eastman had floated into another channel of prosperity. He was to go to Russia as a railroad-director at a large salary, and ample chance for speculation. Gertrude was all elation. She wrote to Irene, generously forgiving her for not having submitted to be buried alive at Frodsham Park, and proposed that she should rejoin her as soon as she was able to travel. They would go to Vienna and Berlin, and spend the winter in St. Petersburg. "I hope your beauty has not gone off," she wrote very kindly. "One needs it to compare with some of the Russian women I have seen."

Mrs. Minor had taken a summer cottage at Long Branch. Servants, children, horses and carriages, were to go thither. Irene and her mother must spend the season with them.

"You do look dreadfully," she said to Irene; "but moping here will not mend you. It was a most absurd step for Fred to come back to Yerbury, and take that paltry position! He has no real Lawrence pride, and I don't see that his elegant education has done much for him. Why didn't he study law, and go into politics? With his style and Mr. Minor's connection, he might have filled some high position."

"Really," returned Irene, with a touch of the old sarcasm, "I suppose he thought starving hardly a pleasant process while he was waiting for this high position. I have sometimes wondered why Mr. Minor did not take him into his office, and induct him into the mysteries of stock-broking."

Agatha bit her lip.

"Because he did not know enough," she flung out. "And he will potter away his best days there at Garafield's, never amounting to any thing! Father had better have put him in the business."

"Jack Darcy is master at Hope Mills. He was once quite a bÊte noir of yours, I believe. He and Fred have floated together again, an exemplification of the power of early attraction."

"He will not be master of Hope Mills long, if what I hear is true," said Agatha in a vengeful tone, as if she would be glad to bring about such a greatly-to-be-desired downfall. "Fred always did have low tastes. But about yourself: you had better come to Long Branch, and recruit for two months, or so, and then go out to join Gertrude. Of course, Irene, you know your best time has gone by here. I intend that my daughters shall be married before they are twenty. I will not have them wasting their best years."

There was a long pause. Agatha studied Irene's apathetical face, and wondered how she could have changed into such a fright.

"Irene!" in a commanding tone.

"Agatha, I may as well tell you,"—the voice was slow and incisive, as if every word was measured,—"that I shall not go to Long Branch nor abroad. No one shall be troubled by my failing looks and possibly poor health. I will live my own secluded life, asking nothing of the world but to be let alone."

"You are a fool, Irene!" Mrs. Minor scanned her with her pitiless black eyes, and raised her own tall figure to its most impressive height. "You are a deliberate, wilful fool! You will maunder and groan and sigh through the next few years, and become one of those wretched bundles of nerves and whims and conceits, a miserable old maid, whom the world holds up to ridicule, and rightly too; a faded, insipid, querulous, worn-out belle, whose past triumphs are remembered only to her disfavor. We can forgive a woman of mother's age, who has had her day; but the other shallow creatures are fit only to be bundled into a convent, out of sight."

A dull scarlet had slowly mounted Irene's face. She did not raise her eyes. In an emotionless tone she merely said, "Thank you. I wish there were convents without the fuss of religion. I should go into one now."

"The best place for you certainly."

Then Mrs. Minor gave Fred a piece of her mind, and washed her hands of Yerbury.

The result of sundry after-discussions was that Dr. Maverick found a pretty seaside place not many miles distant, with just enough interest to keep one entertained, and no fashionable, exhausting life. He managed to persuade Miss Barry and Sylvie and Mrs. Lawrence to go, and insisted upon Irene having the variety of air and scene. There was a roomy furnished cottage at their disposal: they could cook their meals, or have them sent in. Fred should come down once or twice a week, and he and Darcy would enliven them with flying visits. Miss Barry must take her pony and carriage.

Jack approved of the plan at once. It would bring the two beings in whom he was so warmly interested more closely in contact with each other, give them those bits and fragments of leisurely indolence so conducive to sentiment. Sylvie would judge more truly and tenderly than it was possible to do at present; and he could not see her alone, could not be her companion in walks and drives, without betraying his regard.

While the plan was still under consideration, Dame Fortune resolved to smile upon Fred Lawrence. Late in the winter he had sent a paper on household art, with several exquisite designs, to a magazine, and for once happened to hit the prevailing fancy. He was asked for a series of such articles, with the offer of having them collected in book form afterward. It more than encouraged him: it gave him a feeling of certainty that he had struck the right vein, that here was a fair and appreciative field for his talent, his fine taste, and high culture. A little utilitarian, perhaps; and he smiled, thinking of some past dreams. And was true art so ethereal that it must exist only in the exalted states of the mind? Was it not to embellish and beautify all lives, rather than crowd out the thousands that the few might feast on some exquisite vision? Was any art higher than that which boldly thrust aside shams, and went to the shaping of true, strong, faithful aims in the work placed before one? Were those wonderful Greek fragments, wrought in times of social depravity such as the world now shrank from mentioning, to be one's guide and inspirer, to the despising of purer if less sensuous forms of beauty? If one enlightened and sweetened the life of to-day with the work of to-day, would it not be as worthy as hugging to the soul some useless theory?

He mentioned his new offer to Mr. Garafield. It would not be honest to take the time that was another's; and surely Fred Lawrence's mental capacity had largely cleared when he came to put into every-day work the fine sense of honor that he had hitherto supposed belonged only to a liberal education.

Mr. Garafield was a shrewd business-man, although fanciful in taste. He should be the gainer by associating this true artist with him. Decorative art was coming to be a truly recognized branch; and its leaders and apostles would reap not only credit, but financial success.

Fred was amazed. Only yesterday, it seemed, he had well-nigh been refused the privilege of earning his bread. To-day, in an unexpected quarter, prosperity opened upon him.

"I have no capital, as you well know," he said stammeringly to Mr. Garafield.

Garafield smiled and nodded in a satisfied manner.

"The brain-work and the ideas are sufficient capital, Mr. Lawrence. By this partnership you will be free of drudgery: some other clerk can keep books and take orders for us. You will gain time for your literary labors, and those in turn will carry weight in the business. Neither do I think you will regret taking my offer."

Fred went down to Jack Darcy's that evening, and told over his plans, as in other years he had confessed his college ambitions and the laurels he was to win. And Jack's face lighted up with honest enthusiasm, while his voice took on a curious little tremble. He was so glad! for Sylvie's sake and love's sake.