The house was full, said the man at the ticket-window. Nothing to be had, short of almost the back row, under the gallery. Rachel shook her head, and her cousin, Willy Maine, leaving the window, expressed his indignation. "You ought to have told me this afternoon that you wanted to go! Anybody might have known"—Willy was from one of the sleepier villages in one of the sleepiest counties of his native state—"Anybody might have known that in New York you have to get your tickets early! Now we've missed the show!" By now they were out of the swinging doors and down upon the pavement. The night was bright and not especially cold. It was the Lyceum Theatre, and they stood at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street.

"It's too late to try anything else," pondered Rachel. "Willy, I'm sorry. But we truly didn't know we could go until the last minute, and I didn't believe it would be crowded."

"It's a beautiful night," said Hagar. "It's light and bright, and there are crowds of people. Why can't we just walk about until bedtime?"

Willy, who was nineteen but a young giant, pursed his lips. "Is it proper for ladies?"

"Oh, I think so," said Rachel absently, "but would it really amuse you, Hagar?"

"Yes, it would. Let us go slowly, Rachel, and look in windows and pretend to be purchasing."

Willy laughed, genially and patronizingly. "I've been along here. There aren't any Paris fashions in these windows."

"I want," said Hagar succinctly, "to saunter through the streets of a great city."

They began to walk, their faces turned downtown, staying chiefly upon the avenue, but now and then diverging into side streets where there were lights and people. By degrees they came into congested, poorer quarters. To Willy, not long removed from a loneliness of tidal creeks, vast stretches of tobacco, slow, solitary sandy roads, all and any of New York was exciting, all a show, a stimulus swallowed without discrimination. That day Rachel had found occasion to rage against a certain closed circle of conventions. The subject had come up at the breakfast table, introduced by a headline in the morning paper, and she had so shocked her family that for once they had acted as though the volcano was real. Mrs. Maine had grown moist and pink, and had said precipitately that in her time a young woman—whether she were married or single, that didn't matter!—would as soon have thought of putting her hand in the fire as of mentioning such things! And Powhatan had as nearly thundered as was in his nature to do. Rachel shrugged her shoulders and desisted, but she had gone about all day with defiance written in her small, sombre face. Now to-night, the street, the broad stripes of blackness, the thin stripes of gold light, the sound of voices and of many footfalls, the faces when the light fell upon them and the brushing by of half-seen forms suited her raised, angry, and mutinous mood. As for Hagar, the street and its movement simply became herself. She never lost the child's and the poet's power of coalescence.

It was before the days of Waring. The only White Wings upon this avenue had been the snowflakes which a week ago had fallen thickly, which had been dully scraped over the curbing into the gutter, and which now stayed there in irregular, one to three feet in altitude, begrimed Alpine ranges. The cobblestones of the street between, over which the great dray horses ceaselessly passed, were foul enough, while the sidewalks had their own litter of torn scraps of paper, cheap cigar ends, infinitesimal bits of refuse. The day of the weirdness of electric lighting, of the bizarre come-and-go of motion signs was not yet either. Down here there were occasional arc lights, but gas yet reigned in chief. The shops, that were not shops for millionaires, nor even for the Quite Comfortable, all had their winking gaslights. Below them like chequered walls sprang out the variegated show-windows. The wares displayed were usually small in size, slight of value, and high in colour, a kaleidoscopic barbaric display. Above dark doorways the frequent three golden balls showed up well.

Because the night was so mild and windless many people were abroad—people not well-dressed, and yet not quite poverty-stricken in aspect; others who were so, lounging men with hopeless faces, women wandering by, pinched and lost-looking; then again groups or individuals of a fairly prosperous appearance. The flaring gas showed now and again faces that were evidently alien, or there came a snatch of strange jargon. A crowd had gathered at a street corner. A girl wearing a dark-blue poke bonnet with a red ribbon across it was going from one to the other holding out a tambourine. A few pennies clinked into it. A man standing in the centre of the crowd, raised his arm. "Now, we are going to sing." The women in the bonnets beat upon the tambourines, a man with a drum and another with a cornet gave the opening bars, the women raised shrill, sweet voices,—

The hymn ended, a woman lifted both hands and prayed with fervour and a strange, natural eloquence. Then the squad gathered up horn and drum and tambourines, and, drawing a part of the crowd with it, moved up the street to another skirmish ground.

Rachel and Willy and Hagar drifted on. The night was still young, the stars glittering above, the gaslamps making a vista, the footfalls on the pavement murmurous as a stream. The clanging of the street-car bell, the rush of a train on the neighbouring Elevated, the abrupt rise and fall of passing voices—all exercised a fascination. The night was coloured, rhythmic. They came to a building, narrow and plain, with lit windows, as of a hall, on the second floor, and with a clean, fairly lighted stair going up from an open street door. Men and women were entering. A care-worn, stooping, workman-looking man stood by the door with handbills or leaflets which he was giving out. "Socialist Meeting," he said. "Good speaking. The Unemployed and the Strikes. Socialist Meeting. Everybody welcome."

Hagar stopped. "Rachel, I want to go in here. Yes, I do! Come now, be good to me, Rachel! Mr. Maine wants to go, too."

"Socialists!" said Willy. "Those are the people who are blowing up everybody with bombs. I didn't suppose New York would let them hold a meeting! They're devils!"

But Willy had so well-grown a human curiosity that he was not averse to a glimpse of devils. Perhaps he heard himself, back home in the sleepy county, talking at the village post-office or in the churchyard before church. "Yes, and where else do you think I went? I went to a Socialist Meeting! Bomb-throwers—Socialists and Anarchists, you know!" Rachel, hardly more informed, was ready to-night for anything a little desperate. She would not have taken Hagar where she positively thought she ought not to go,—but if these were desperate people going in, they were, to say the least, pretty quiet and orderly and decent-looking;—and it could do no harm just to slip in and sit on a back seat for a few minutes and look on—just as you might go to mass in a cathedral abroad, disapproving all the time, of course. But Hagar had a book or two in her mind, and in addition the talk that Sunday afternoon at the Settlement.

When they had climbed the stairs and come into the hall, which was a small one, they found that the back seats were all taken. Apparently all seats were taken, but as they stood hesitating, a young man beckoned, and before they knew it they found themselves well down the place, seated near the platform. Rachel looked around a little uneasily. "Crowded, and they all look so intent! It's not going to be easy to get up and leave."

The hall was rude enough, and small, the light not brilliant, the platform a few bare boards. Upon it stood a deal table, and three or four chairs. Back of these, fastened against the wall, was a red flag, and on either side of this a strip of canvas with large letters. On one side, UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, and on the other, WORKINGMEN, UNITE! Now standing beside the table, and slowly walking from end to end of the platform, a dark-eyed, well-knit man was speaking, quite conversationally, with a direct appeal, now to this quarter of the hall, now to that. His voice was deep and mellow; he spoke without denunciations, with a quiet reasonableness and conviction. At the moment he was stating a theory, giving the data upon which it was based, weighing it, comparing it with its counter theory. He used phrases—"Economic Determinism"—"Unearned Increment"—"Class-Consciousness"—"Problem of Distribution"—explained clearly what he meant by them, then put them aside. "They are phrases that will serve their ends and pass from speech," he said. "We shall bring in modifiers, we shall make other phrases, and they, too, in their turn, will pass from the tongues of men; but the idea behind them—the idea—the idea and its expression, the intellectual and moral sanction, the thing that is metaphysical and immortal, that will not pass! The very word Socialism may pass, but Socialism itself will be in the blood and bone and marrow of the world that is to be! And this is what is that Socialism." He began to speak in aphorisms, in words from old Wisdom-Religions, and then, for all they were stories of quite modern happenings, in parables—the woe of the world epitomized, a generalization of its needs, all lines of help synthesized into a world saviour, which, lo! was the world itself. He made an end, stood a moment with kindling eyes, then sat down. After an appreciable silence there came a strange, deep applause, men and women striking fist on palm, striking the bare floor with ill-shod feet.

A small, wiry dark man, sitting on the platform, rose and spoke rapidly for twenty minutes. He had a caustic wit and the power of invective which, if possessed by the other, had not been displayed. Once or twice he evoked a roar of angry laughter. When he had finished, and the applause had subsided, the chairman of the evening stood up and spoke. "As the comrades know, it is our habit to turn the last half-hour into an open meeting. Nearly always there's somebody who's been thinking and studying and wants to say a word as to what he's found—or there's somebody who's got a bit of personal experience that he thinks might help a comrade who's struggling, maybe, through a like pit. Anybody that feels like speaking out, let him do it—or let her do it. Men and women, we're all comrades—and though Socialists are said not to be religious, we're all religious enough to like a good experience meeting—"

He paused, waiting for some one to rise. The first speaker came for a moment to his side. "Mr. Chairman, may I say one word to our comrades, and to any others who may be here? It is this. If 'religious' means world-service and a recognition and a striving toward the ultimate divine in my neighbour as in myself, and in myself as in my neighbour—then I think Socialism may be called religious."

As he moved back to his chair a man arose in the back of the house and began to speak. After a moment the chairman halted him with a gesture. "It is difficult for the comrades on this side the hall to hear you. Won't you come to the platform?" The man hesitated, then nodded his head; and with a certain deliberateness moved down the aisle, and stepping upon the only slightly raised platform stood facing the gathering. A colour flared in his cheek, and his hands, held somewhat stiffly at his sides, opened and shut. It was evident that he was not an accustomed speaker, and that there was diffidence or doubt of himself and his welcome to be overcome. He began stammering, with nervous hesitation. If anything he could say would help by one filing he would say it, though he wasn't used—yet—to speaking. He owed a debt and he believed in paying debts—though not the way the world made you pay them.

It was hard to tell how young or old he was. At times he looked boyish; then, when a certain haggard, brooding aspect came upon him, he seemed a middle-aged man. His clothes were poor, but whole and clean, his shirt a grey flannel one. Above the loose collar showed a short, dark beard, well-cut features, and deep-set dark eyes.

Lines came into Hagar's forehead between her eyes. She had seen this man somewhere. Where? She had a trick of holding her mind passive, when the wanted memory would slowly rise, like water from a deep, deep well. Now, after a minute or two, it came. She had seen him in the street-car that night, going from Eglantine to see "Romeo and Juliet." He had been in workman's clothes, he had touched her skirt, standing before her in the car; then he had found a seat, and she had watched him unfold and read a newspaper. Some vague, uncertain thought that she could not trace had made her regard him at intervals until with Miss Bedford and Lily and Laydon she had left the car....

The man on the platform had shaken off the initial clumsiness of speech and bearing. Like a swimmer, he had needled the wave. He was not clumsy now; he was speaking with short, stripped words, nakedly, with earnestness at white heat. Once he had been dumb and angry, he said, as a maddened dog. He had been through years that had made him so. He had been growing like a wolf. There were times when he wanted to take hold of the world's throat and tear it out. "Do you remember Ishmael in the Bible?—his hand against every man and every man's hand against him? Well, I was growing to feel that way." Then at that point—"and that was perhaps three years ago, and I was down South in a town in my state, trying to get work. I knew how to break rock, and I knew how to make parts of shoes, and I didn't know much besides, except that it was a hard world and I hated it"—at this point chance "or something" had sent him an acquaintance, an educated man, a bookkeeper in the concern where he finally got a job. Out of the acquaintanceship had grown a friendship. "After a while I got to going to his house. He had a wife who helped him lots." The three used to talk together, and the man lent him books and made him read them, and "little by little, he led me on. He was like an old man I knew in the mountains when I was a boy. He showed me that we're all sick and sorry, but that we're growing a principle of health. He showed me how slow we creep up from worm to man, and how now we're fluttering toward something farther on, and how hands of the past come upon us, and how we yet escape—and the wings strengthen. He showed me how vindictiveness is no use, and how much that is wrong with the world is owing to poor social mechanism and can be changed. He showed me what Brotherliness means, on the road to Unity. He put it in my mind and heart to want to help. He told me I had a good mind. I had always rather liked books, but I'd been where I couldn't get any, even if they'd given you time for reading. He made me study things out, and one day I began to think—think for myself—think it out. I've never stopped. Usually now, I'm at night-school nights. I'm learning, and I'm going to keep on, until I make thinking Wisdom." He studied the ceiling a moment, then spoke out with a ring in his voice. "I was a mountain boy. When I wasn't out of my teens I got drunk at a dance and played hell-fool and almost killed a man or two. Then the sheriff chased me up to Catamount Gap, and the stuff was still in me and my head hitting the stars, and I shot and shot at the sheriff.... Well, the end of all that playing was that I went to the penitentiary for four years. One thing I want wisdom for is to know how to talk to people about what is called crime and about that great crime, our law courts and penal system. Well, I came out of the penitentiary, and then it was very hard to get work. It was bitter hard. That's another thing I want learning and wisdom for—to talk about that. You see, the penitentiary wasn't content with the four years; it followed me always. And then it's hard to get work anyhow. There wasn't any use in going back to the mountains. But after a while I got work and kept it. Then, three months ago, I came up here, and I got work here. I'm working on your streets now, and studying between times.... I'm standing up here to-night to tell you that you've got a flag that draws the unhappy to you, when it happens that they're seeking with the mind. I don't know much about class-consciousness. We didn't have it in the mountains, though, of course, we had it in the penitentiary. But I know that we've got to take the best that was in the past and leave the worst, and go on with the best toward new things. We've got to help others and help ourselves. And it doesn't do just to want to help; you've got to have a working theory; you've got to use your mind. You've got to consider your line of march and mark it out and blast away the rock upon it and go on. And I am willing to be of your construction gang. The man I was talking about thought pretty much that way, too. He said there were a lot of isolated people, here, there, and everywhere, not only those that call themselves working-people, but others, too, and women just as well as men, who were thinking that way—that they might not call themselves Socialists, but that they were blood kin just the same. I don't know why, to-night, but I am thinking of something that happened when I had been a year in the penitentiary, and they had rented a lot of us up the river to make the bed for a railroad. While I was up there, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I ran away. They set the dogs on my track and took me, of course, but before they did, I was lying in a thicket, and I hadn't had anything to eat for two days and a night. A little girl, about twelve years old, I reckon, came over a hill and down to the stream by the thicket. She gathered flowers and set them around a big rock for a flower doll tea-party. She had two little apple pies and she put those in the middle—and then she saw me, lying in the thicket. And I was wearing"—the colour flared into his face, then ebbed—"I was wearing stripes.... I don't think she ever thought of being frightened. She gave me both pies, and she sat and talked to me like a friendly human being. I've never forgotten. And when the dogs came, as they did pretty soon, and the men behind them, she lay on the grass and cried and cried as if her heart would break. I've never forgotten. That's what I mean. I don't care what we've done, if we're not fiends incarnate, and very few of us are, we've got to feel toward one another like that. We've got to feel, 'if you are struck, I am struck. If you are wearing stripes, I am wearing stripes.' We've got to feel something more than Brotherhood. We've got to feel identity. And as a part, anyway, of that road seems to me to be named Socialization, I'm willing to be called a Socialist."

He nodded to the audience, and, stepping from the platform, amid a clapping of hands and stamping of feet, did not return to his place in the back of the hall, but sat upon the edge of the stage, his hands clasped around his knee. A German clockmaker and a fiery, dark woman spoke each for a few minutes, and then the meeting ended. There was a noise of rising, of pushing back chairs, a surge of people, in part toward the exit, in part toward the platform. Hagar touched Rachel on the arm. "Wait here for me. I want to speak to that man.—Yes, I know him. Wait here, Rachel."

She made her way to the space before the platform where men and women were pressing about the speakers. The man with the grey flannel shirt was answering a question or two, put by the dark-eyed man who had spoken first. He stood with a certain mountain litheness and lack of tension. A movement, his answer given, brought him face to face with Hagar. She had taken off her hat, so that it might not trouble the people behind her, and she had it still in her hand. Her dark, soft hair framed her face much as it had done in childhood; she was looking at him with wide, startled eyes.

"I had to come to tell you," she said, "that I am glad you came through. I never forgot you either."

"'Forgot you either!'—" The man stared at her.

"They were apple turnovers," she said; but before she had really spoken there came the flush and light of recognition.

"Oh—h!..." He fell back a step; then, with a reddened cheek and a light in his eyes, put out his hand. She laid hers in it; his fingers closed over hers in a grasp strong enough to give pain.

Then, as their hands dropped, as she fell back a little, the second speaker came between, then others. Suddenly the lights were lowered, people were staying too long. Rachel's hand on Hagar's arm drew her back. "Come, we must go!" Willy, too, was insistent. "It's getting late. Show's over!" The space between her and the boy of the thicket, the figure drawn against the sky of the canal lock, widened, filled with forms in the partial dusk. She was half-drawn, half-pushed by the outgoing stream through the door, out upon the stair, and so down to the street, where now there were fewer lights. The wind had arisen and the air turned colder. "We'll take this cross-town car, and then the Elevated," and while she was still bewildered, they were on the car. The bell clanged, they went on; again, in what seemed the shortest time, they were out in the night, then climbing the long stairs, then through the gate and upon the rushing Elevated. Willy talked and talked. He was excited. "I thought it was going to be all about bombs! But they talked sense, didn't they?—and there was something in the air that kind of warmed you! Next time I'm in New York I'm going again. Look at the lights streaming off! By Jiminy! New York's great!"

He was not staying at the Maines', but with other kinspeople a few blocks away. He saw the two in at the door, said good-night, and went whistling away. Hagar and Rachel turned off the lowered gas in the hall and went softly upstairs.

As they passed Mrs. Maine's door she asked sleepily from within, "Did you enjoy the play?"

"We didn't go," said Rachel. "We'll tell you about it in the morning."

When the two had said good-night and parted and Hagar, in her own room, kneeling at the window, looked up at the Pleiades, at Aldebaran—only then came the realization that she did not know that man's name, that she had never heard it. In her thoughts he had always been "the boy."