Now, to recur to the period of my arrival in the West—the day after Miss Leigh's return home her father paid her the unusual honor of leaving his office to take lunch with her.

Her mind was full of the subject of the paper she had read in the press that morning, giving a lurid picture of the inconvenience and distress entailed on the passengers and scoring the management of the company for permitting what was claimed to be "so gross a breach of the rights of the public."

Ordinarily, she would have passed it over with indifference—a shrug of her white shoulders and a stamp of her little foot would have been all the tribute she would have paid to it. But of late she had begun to think.

It had never before been brought so clearly to the notice of the girl how her own pleasures—not the natural but the created pleasures—of which she was quite as fond as other healthy girls of her age and class, were almost exclusively at the expense of the class she had been accustomed to regard with a general sort of vague sympathy as "the Poor."

The attack on her father and herself enraged her; but, as she cooled down, a feeling deeper than mere anger at an injustice took possession of her mind.

To find that she herself had, in a way, been the occasion of the distress to women and children, startled her and left in her mind a feeling of uneasiness to which she had hitherto been a stranger.

"Father," she began, "did you see that dreadful article in the Trumpet this morning?"

Mr. Leigh, without looking up, adopted the natural line of special pleading, although he knew perfectly well instantly the article to which she referred.

"What article?" he asked.

"That story about our having delayed the passenger train with women and children on it and then having side-tracked them without breakfast, in order to give our car the right-of-way."

"Oh! yes. I believe I saw that. I see so many ridiculous things in the newspapers, I pay no attention to them."

"But, father, that was a terrible arraignment," said the girl.

"Of whom?" asked Mr. Leigh, with a little twinkle in his eye.

"Why, of you; of Aunt Sophia, of——"

"Of me!"

"Yes, and of me—of everybody connected with the road."

"Not of you, my dear," said Mr. Leigh, with the light of affection warming up his rather cold face. "Surely no one, even the anarchistic writers of the anarchistic press, could imagine anything to say against you."

"Yes, of me, too, though not by name, perhaps; but I was there and I was in a way the cause of the trouble, because the car was sent after me and Aunt Sophia, and I feel terribly guilty about it."

"Guilty of what, my dear?" smiled her father. "Of simply using your own property in a way satisfactory to you?"

"That is just it, father; that is the point which the writer raises. Is it our own property?"

"It certainly is, my love. Property that I have paid for—my associates and I—and which I control, or did control, in conjunction with the other owners, and propose to control to suit myself and them so long as we have the controlling interest, every socialistic writer, speaker and striker to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Well," said the girl, "that sounds all right. It looks as if you ought to be able to do what you like with your own; but, do you know, father, I am not sure that it is our own. That is just the point—he says——"

"Oh! nonsense!" said her father lightly. "Don't let this Jew go and fill your clear little head with such foolishness as that. Enjoy life while you can. Make your mind easy, and get all the use you can out of what I have amassed for you. I only hope you may have as much pleasure in using it as I have had in providing it."

The banker gazed over at his daughter half-quizzically, half-seriously, took out a cigar, and began to clip the end leisurely. The girl laughed. She knew that he had something on his mind.

"Well, what is it?" she asked smiling.

He gave a laugh. "Don't go and imagine that because that Jew can write he is any the less a—don't go and confound him and his work. It is the easiest thing in the world to pick flaws—to find the defects in any system. The difficult thing is constructive work."

She nodded.

"Did that foreigner go down there while you were there?"

"The Count?"

"The No-Count."

"No, of course not. Where did you get such an idea?"

He lighted his cigar with a look of relief, put it in his mouth, and sat back in his chair.

"Don't let your Aunt Sophia go and make a fool of you. She is a very good business woman, but you know she is not exactly—Solomon, and she is stark mad about titles. When you marry, marry a man."

"Mr. Canter, for example?" laughed the girl. "He is Aunt Sophia's second choice. She is always talking about his money."

"She is always talking about somebody's money, generally her own. But before I'd let that fellow have you I'd kill him with my own hand. He's the worst young man I know. Why, if I could tell you half—yes, one-tenth, of the things I have heard about him—But I can't tell you—only don't go and let anybody pull the wool over your eyes."

"No fear of that," said the girl.

"No, I don't know that there is. I think you've got a pretty clear little head on your shoulders. But when any one gets—gets—why, gets her feelings enlisted you can't just count on her, you know. And with your Aunt Sophy ding-donging at you and flinging her sleek Count and her gilded fools at you, it takes a good head to resist her."

The girl reassured him with a smile of appreciation.

"I don't know where she got that from," continued her father. "It must have been that outside strain, the Prenders. Your mother did not have a trace of it in her. I never saw two half-sisters so different. She'd have married anybody on earth she cared for—and when she married me I had nothing in the world except what my father chose to give me and no very great expectations. She had a rich fellow from the South tagging after her—a big plantation and lots of slaves and all that, and your Aunt Sophy was all for her marrying him—a good chap, too—a gentleman and all that; but she turned him down and took me. And I made my own way. What I have I made afterward—by hard work till I got a good start, and then it came easy enough. The trouble since has been to keep others from stealing it from me—and that's more trouble than to make it, I can tell you—what between strikers, gamblers, councilmen, and other knaves, I have a hard time to hold on to what I have."

"I know you have to work very hard," said the girl, her eyes on him full of affection. "Why, this is the first time I've had you up to lunch with me in months. I felt as much honored as if it had been the King of England."

"That's it—I have to stay down there to keep the robbers from running off with my pile. That young fellow thought he'd get a little swipe at it, but I taught him a thing or two. He's a plunger. His only idea is to make good by doubling up—all right if the market's rising and you can double. But it's a dangerous game, especially if one tries to recoup at the faro table."

"Does he play faro?" asked the girl.

"He plays everything, mainly Merry H—l. I beg your pardon—I didn't mean to say that before you, but he does. And if his father didn't come to his rescue and plank up every time he goes broke, he'd have been in the bankrupt court—or jail—and that's where he'll wind up yet if he don't look out."

"I don't believe you like him," laughed the girl.

"Oh! yes, I do. I like him well enough—he is amusing rather, he is gay, careless, impudent—he's the main conduit through which I extract money from old Prender's coffers. He never spends anything unless you pay him two gold dollars down for one paper one on the spot. But I want him to keep away from you, that's all; I suppose I've got to lose you some time, but I'll be hanged if I want to give you up to a blackguard—a gambler—a rou—a lib—a d——d blackguard like that."

"Well, you will never have that to do," said the girl; "I promise you that."

"How is the strike coming on?" asked his daughter. "When I went away it was just threatening, and I read in the papers that the negotiations failed and the men were ordered out; but I haven't seen much about it in the papers since, though I have looked."

"Oh! Yes—it's going on, over on the other lines across town, in a desultory sort of way," said her father wearily—"the fools! They won't listen to any reason."

"Poor people!" sighed the girl. "Why did they go out?"

"Poor fools!" said Mr. Leigh warmly; "they walked out for nothing more than they always have had."

"I saw that they had some cause; what was it?"

"Oh! they've always some cause. If they didn't have one they'd make it. Now they are talking of extending it over our lines."

"Our lines! Why?"

"Heaven knows. We've done everything they demanded—in reason. They talk about a sympathetic strike. I hear that a fellow has come on to bring it about. Poor fools!"

The girl gave him a smile of affection as he pushed back his chair. And leaning over her as he walked toward the door, he gave her a kiss of mingled pride and affection. But when he had left the room she sat still for some moments, looking straight ahead of her, her brow slightly puckered with thought which evidently was not wholly pleasant, and then with a sweeping motion of her hand she pushed her chair back, and, as she arose from the table, said: "I wish I knew what is right!" That moment a new resolution entered her mind, and, ringing the bell for the servant, she ordered her carriage.