If additional proof of the awful cost of hating one’s fellow-men were required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter must furnish it in sickening excess. But other facts, too, were rendered glaringly patent by that same desperate clash which made Avon a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken only in hushed whispers when one’s thought dwells for a moment upon the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void which separates master and servant, and which a money-drunk class insolently calls God-made, grows wider with each roar of musketry aimed by a frenzied militia at helpless men and women; grows deeper with each splitting crack of the dynamite that is laid to tear asunder the conscienceless wielder of the goad; and must one day fall gaping in a cavernous embouchure that will engulf a nation.

Hitt saw it, and shuddered; Haynerd, too. Ames may have dimly marked the typhoon on the horizon, but, like everything that manifested opposition to this superhuman will, it only set his teeth the firmer and thickened the callous about his cold heart. Carmen saw it, too. And she knew––and the world must some day know––that but one tie has ever been designed adequate to bridge this yawning caÑon of human hatred. That tie is love. Aye, well she knew that the world laughed, and called it chimera; called it idealism, and emotional weakness. And 201 well she knew that the most pitiable weakness the world has ever seen was the class privilege which nailed the bearer of the creed of love upon the cross, and to-day manifests in the frantic grasping of a nation’s resources, and the ruthless murder of those who ask that they, too, may have a share in that abundance which is the common birthright of all. Do the political bully, the grafter, the tout, know the meaning of love? No; but they can be taught. Oh, not by the hypocritical millionaire pietists who prate their glib platitudes to their Sunday Bible classes, and return to their luxurious homes to order the slaughter of starving women and babes! They, like their poor victims, are deep under the spell of that mesmerism which tells them that evil is good. Nor by the Church, with its lamentable weakness of knowledge and works. Only by those who have learned something of the Christ-principle, and are striving daily to demonstrate its omnipotence in part, can the world be taught a saving knowledge of the love that solves every problem and creates a new heaven and a newer, better concept of the earth and its fullness.

That morning when Carmen went to see Ames the Express received word of the walk-out of the Avon mill employes. Almost coincident with the arrival of the news, Carmen herself came unsteadily into Hitt’s office. The editor glanced up at her, then looked a second time. He had never before seen her face colorless. Finally he laid down his papers.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Nothing,” answered the girl. “What work have you––for me––to-day?” She smiled, though her lips trembled.

“Where have you been?” he pursued, scanning her closely.

She did not reply at once. Then, so low that he scarcely caught the words, “I––I have been with––a friend.”

Sidney Ames came puffing into the office at that moment. “Hello!” he cried as he saw Carmen. “How does it happen you’re out riding with Willett? Saw him help you out of an auto just now.”

“He brought me here,” she answered softly.

“Where from?”

“Your father’s office.”

Hitt and the lad stared at her with open mouths. She turned, and started for her own room, moving as if in a haze. As she neared the door she stumbled. Sidney sprang after her and caught her in his arms. When she turned her face, they saw that her eyes were swimming in tears.

Hitt was on his feet instantly. “Look here!” he cried. “Something’s wrong! Leave us, Sidney. Let me talk with her alone.”

The boy reluctantly obeyed. Hitt closed the door after him, then took the girl’s hand and led her back to his own chair. “Now, little one,” he said gently, “tell me all about it.”

For a moment she sat quiet. Then the tears began to flow; and then she leaned her head against him and sobbed––sobbed as does the stricken mother who hangs over the lifeless form of her babe––sobbed as does the strong man bereft of the friend of his bosom––sobbed as did the Man of Sorrow, when he held out his arms over the worldly city that cruelly rejected him. He was the channel for the divine; yet the wickedness of the human mind broke his great heart. Carmen was not far from him at that moment.

Hitt held her hand, and choked back the lump that filled his throat. Then the weeping slowly ceased, and the girl looked up into his anxious face.

“It’s all past now,” she said brokenly. “Jesus forgave them that killed him. And––”

“You have been with––Ames?” said Hitt in a low, quiet tone. “And he tried to kill you?”

“He––he knew not what he was doing. Evil used him, because as yet he has no spiritual understanding. But––God is life! There is––no––death!” Her voice faded away in a whisper.

“Well, little girl, I am waiting for the whole story. What happened?”

Carmen got to her feet. “Nothing happened, Mr. Hitt––nothing. It didn’t happen––it wasn’t real. I––I seemed to manifest weakness––and I fell––to the floor––but I didn’t lose consciousness. And just then Mr. Willett came in––and Mr. Ames sent me here with him.”

“But what had Ames said to you, Carmen?” persisted Hitt, his face dark with anger.

The girl smiled feebly. “I see Mr. Ames only as––as God’s child,” she murmured. “Evil is not real, and it doesn’t happen. Now I want to work––work as I never did before! I must! I must!”

“Will you not tell me more about it?” he asked, for he knew now that a deadly thrust had been made at the girl’s life.

She brushed the tears away from her eyes. “It didn’t happen,” was her reply. “Good is all that is. God is life. There is no death!”

A suspicion flashed into Hitt’s mind, kindled by the girl’s insistence upon the nothingness of death. “Carmen,” he asked, “did he tell you that––some one had died?”

She came to him and laid her head against him. Her hands stole into his. “Don’t! Please, Mr. Hitt! We must never 203 speak of this again! Promise me! I shall overcome it, for God is with me. Promise that no one but us shall know! Make Sidney promise. It––it is––for me.”

The man’s eyes grew moist, and his throat filled. He drew the girl to him and kissed her forehead. “It shall be as you wish, little one,” he said in a choking voice.

“Now set me to work!” she cried wildly. “Anything! This is another opportunity to––to prove God! I must prove Him! I must––right here!”

He turned to his desk with a heavy heart. “There is work to be done now,” he said. “I wonder––”

She took the telegram from his hands and scanned it. At once she became calm, her own sorrow swallowed up in selfless love. “Oh, they have gone out at Avon! Those mothers and children––they need me! Mr. Hitt, I must go there at once!”

“I thought so,” he replied, swallowing hard. “I knew what you would do. But you are in higher hands than mine, Carmen. Go home now, and get ready. You can go down in the morning. And we, Sidney and I, will say nothing of––of your visit to his father.”

---

That night Hitt called up the Beaubien and asked if he and Haynerd might come and talk with her after the paper had gone to press, and requesting that she notify Carmen and Father Waite. A few hours later the little group met quietly in the humble cottage. Miss Wall and Sidney were with them. And to them all those first dark hours of morning, when as yet the symbol of God’s omnipresence hung far below the horizon, seemed prescient with a knowledge of evil’s further claims to the lives and fortunes of men.

“I have asked you here,” Hitt gravely announced when they were assembled, “to consider a matter which touches us all––how deeply, God alone knows. At ten o’clock to-night I received this message.” He opened the paper which he held in his hand and read:

“‘Property of Hitt oil company, including derricks, pump houses, storage tanks, destroyed by fire. Dynamite in pump houses exploded, causing wells to cave and choke. Loss complete. Wire instructions.’”

The news burst over them like the cracking of a bomb. Haynerd, who, like the others, had been kept in ignorance of the message until now, started from his chair with a loud exclamation, then sank back limp. Carmen’s face went white. Evil seemed to have chosen that day with canny shrewdness to overwhelm her with its quick sallies from out the darkness of the carnal mind.

Hitt broke the tense silence. “I see in this,” he said slowly, “the culmination of a long series of efforts to ruin the Express. That my oil property was deliberately wrecked, I have not the slightest doubt. Nor can I doubt by whose hand.”

“Whose?” demanded Haynerd, having again found his voice. “Ames’s?”

Hitt replied indirectly. “The Express has stood before the world as a paper unique and apart. And because of its high ideals, the forces of evil singled it out at the beginning for their murderous assaults. That the press of this country is very generally muzzled, stifled, bought and paid for, I have good reason now to know. My constant brushes with the liquor interests, with low politicians, judges, senators, and dive-keepers, have not been revealed even to you. Could you know the pressure which the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, has tried to exert upon us, you would scarce credit me with veracity. But the Express has stood out firm against feudalism, mediaevalism, and entrenched ecclesiasticism. It has fearlessly opposed the legalizing of drugging. It has fought the debauching of a nation’s manhood by the legalized sale of a deadly poison, alcohol. And it has fought without quarter the pernicious activity of morally stunted brewers and distillers, whose hellish motto is, ‘Make the boys drink!’ It has fought the money octopus, and again and again has sounded to the world the peril which money-drunken criminals like Ames and his clique constitute. And for that we must now wear the crown of martyrdom!”

Silence, dismal and empty, lay over the little room for a long time. Then Hitt resumed. “The Express has not been self-supporting. Its growth has been steady, but it has depended for its deficit upon the revenue from my oil property. And so have we all. Ames ruined Madam Beaubien financially, as well as Miss Wall. He cleaned you out, Ned. And now, knowing that we all depended upon my oil wells, he has, I doubt not, completely removed that source of income.”

“But,” exclaimed Haynerd, “your property was insured, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Hitt, with a feeble attempt at a smile. “But with the proviso that dynamite should not be kept on the premises. You will note that dynamite wrecked the wells. That doubtless renders my policies void. But, even in case I should have a fighting chance with the insurance companies, don’t you think that they will be advised that I purposely set fire to the wells, in order to collect the insurance? I most certainly do. And I shall find myself with a big lawsuit on my hands, and with no funds to conduct the fight. Ames’s work, you know, 205 is always thorough, and the Express is already facing his suit for libel.”

“But you told us you were going to mortgage your property,” said Miss Wall.

“I stood ready to, should the Express require it. But, with its recent little boom, our paper did not seem to need that as yet,” he returned.

“Good God!” cried Haynerd. “We’re done for!”

“Yes, Ned, God is good!” It was Carmen who spoke.

Hitt turned quickly to the girl. “Can you say that, after all you have endured, Carmen?”

He looked at her for a moment, lost in wonder. “An outcast babe,” he murmured, “left on the banks of a great river far, far away; reared without knowledge of father or mother, and amid perils that hourly threatened to crush her; torn from her beloved ones and thrust out into an unknown and unsympathetic world; used as a stepping-stone to advance the low social ambitions of worldly women; blackened by the foulest slander, and ejected as an outcast by those who had fawned at her feet; still going about with her beautiful message of love, even though knowing that her childhood home is enveloped in the flames of war, and her dear ones scattered, perhaps lost; spurned from the door of the rich man whom she sought to save; carrying with her always the knowledge that the one upon whom her affections had centered had a son in distant Cartagena, and yet herself contributing to the support of the little lad; and now, this morning––” He stopped, for he remembered his promise.

“This morning,” she finished, “shielded by the One who is both Father and Mother to me.”

“That One surely ought to love you, Carmen––”

“He does,” she answered softly.

“Well!” put in Haynerd, torn with anger and fear. “What are we going to do now?”

“Everything, Ned, that error seems to tell us not to do,” replied the girl.

She reached over to the little table that stood near, and took from it a Bible. Opening it, she read aloud, very slowly, the entire fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Then she concluded by reading the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans.

“Now,” she said, looking up, “we know what we are going to do, don’t we? We are going right on, as ‘seeing Him who is invisible’ to men like Mr. Ames.”

They sat looking at her in silence.

“There is no curse, whether of the Church, or of business, 206 or of any department of human thought, that can overthrow legitimate business; and we are in the legitimate business of reflecting God to the world. If the physical sense of supply is now lost, we are fortunate, for now we are obliged to acquire a higher sense. All that we have comes from God. And we become aware of it in our own consciousness. It is there that we interpret His supply. Mr. Ames interprets it one way; we, in a very different way. God has always been able to prepare a table in the wilderness of human thought. If we look for supply from without, we shall not find it, for everything is within. And the very fact that there is a legitimate demand shows that there is the supply to meet it, for––though the world hasn’t learned this yet––it is the supply itself that really creates the demand!”

“But money makes the wheels go!” retorted Haynerd.

“Money, Ned, is the counterfeit of God. He is our only supply. He is our Principle––infinite, inexhaustible. He is our credit––without limit! We are facing a crisis, but, like every seeming disturbance of the infinite harmony, it will vanish in a little while if we but cling to the divine Mind that is God for guidance.”

Hitt folded the telegram and returned it to his pocket. “Are you going to Avon to-morrow?” he abruptly asked of the girl.

“Yes, why not?”

“We can’t afford it now!” cried Haynerd.

Hitt reflected a moment. Then he rose. “And we sit here lamenting!” he exclaimed. “And when we have in our midst this girl, who has borne, without one word of complaint or reviling, the world’s most poignant sorrows! I––I really regret that I told you of––of this telegram. I seemed for a moment to be overwhelmed. But I am on my feet again now!”

He reached into a pocket and took out some bills, which he handed to Carmen. “That will see you through for a day or so down there. If you need more, wire me. I’ll get it from some source! Come,” he added, beckoning to Haynerd, “the Express will be issued to-morrow as usual, and we must get to bed. I’ve really had quite a strenuous day!” He turned, then paused and looked at Carmen.

The girl caught the meaning in his glance, and went directly to the piano. Hitt followed and bent over her.

“Don’t,” he said, “if you do not feel like it. This day has been a hard one for you, I know. And––”

“But I do feel like it,” she answered, smiling up at him. “I want to sing for you. And,” her voice dropped low, “I want to sing to––Him.”

Hitt gulped down something in his throat. “The bravest 207 little girl in the whole wide world!” he muttered through his set teeth.

---

The carnage at Avon was not incidental; it was the logical effect of definite mental causes. It was the orderly sequence of an endless train of hatred of man for man, bred of greed and the fear of starvation. And starvation is the externalized human belief that life is at the caprice of intelligent matter. But that is an infraction of the first Commandment, given when the human race was a babe.

When the mill hands left their looms at evening of the day following Ames’s rejection of their demands, the master closed the doors behind them and locked them out. Were not these mills his?

No, they were a sacred trust asset.

Bah! The parrot-cry of the maudlin sentimental!

But, four thousand men, women, and little children, with never a dollar beyond their earnings of the day, thrust out into the blasts of the bitterest winter the New England states had known in years!

True; but why, then, did they strike? For, you see, that of itself proved the soundness of Ames’s single reply to all further appeal: “There is nothing whatever to arbitrate.”

In the garden of the human mind waves many a flower, both black and red, fanned by the foul winds of carnal thought. There grow the brothel, the dive, the gin-shop, the jail. About these hardier stems twine the hospital, the cemetery, the madhouse, the morgue. And Satan, “the man-killer from the beginning,” waters their roots and makes fallow the soil with the blood of fools. But of those for whom the gardener waits, there is none whose blood is so life-giving to these noxious plants as that type of the materially rich who, like Ames, have waxed gross upon the flesh of their own brothers.

Ames was a gambler in human lives. They were his chips, by which he gained or lost, and of themselves were void of intrinsic value. The world was the table whereon he played; the game rouge et noir, with the whirl of predatory commercialism as the wheel, and the ball weighted to drop where he might direct. He carried millions on margin, and with them carried the destinies, for weal or for woe, of millions of his fellow-men, with not one thought that he did so at the cost of their honor and morality, not less than their life-blood.

It had been his custom to close his mills for several months each year, in order to save expense when times were dull. And he did this as casually as he closed the doors of his stables, and with much less thought for the welfare of those concerned. It 208 is doubtful if he had ever really considered the fact that these four thousand human beings were wholly dependent upon him for their very existence. For he was a business man, and gold was far weightier in the scale of values than human flesh, and much less easily obtained. Cain’s comforting philosophy was quite correct, else would the business world not have been so firmly established upon it. Besides, he was terribly busy; and his life was lived upon a plane high, high above that upon which these swarming toilers groveled with their snouts in the dust.

And now, with the doors of his mills barred against the hungry hordes, he would frame the terms upon which they should be reopened. The eight-hour law must not be enforced. Perhaps he could influence the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional, as depriving the mill hands of the right to labor as long as they pleased. Wages should not be raised. And the right to organize and band together for their common good would be contemptuously denied the ignorant rats who should be permitted to toil for him once more. If they offered violence, there was the state militia, armed and impatient to slay. Also, this was an excellent opportunity to stamp out trade-unionism within the confines of his activities. He would win the plaudits of the whole industrial world by so doing. He therefore immediately got in touch with the Governor, a Tammany puppet, and received that loyal henchman’s warm assurances of hearty support for any measures which the great magnate might wish to enforce. He then approached the officers of the state guard, and secured them to a man. Times were hard, and they welcomed his favor. He finally posted armed guards in all his buildings at Avon, and bade them remember that property rights were of divine institution. Then he sat down and dictated the general policy to be followed by the Amalgamated Spinners’ Association throughout the country in support of his own selfish ends.

His activity in these preparations, as in everything, was tremendous. His agents swarmed over the state like ants. The Catholic Archbishop was instructed that he must remove Father Danny from Avon, as his influence was pernicious. But the objection was made that the priest was engaged only in humanitarian labors. It availed not; Ames desired the man’s removal. And removed he was. The widow Marcus likewise had been doing much talking. Ames’s lawyer, Collins, had her haled into court and thoroughly reprimanded. And then, that matters might be precipitated, and Congress duly impressed with the necessity of altering the cotton schedule in favor of the Spinners’ Association, Ames ordered his agents to raise the 209 rents of his miserable Avon tenements. There were few, he knew, who dared even attempt to meet the raise; and those who could not, he ordered set into the streets.

It was a wild winter’s day that the magnate chose for the enforcement of this cruel order. A driving blizzard had raged throughout the night, and the snow had banked up in drifts in places many feet deep. The temperature was freezing, and the strong east wind cut like a knife. It was Ames’s desire to teach these scum a needed lesson, and he had chosen to enlist the elements to aid him in the righteous task.

For a week, ever since the strike was declared, Carmen had lived among these hectored people. Daily her reports of the unbearable situation had gone to Hitt. And through them the editor had daily striven to awaken a nation’s conscience. Ames read the articles, and through the columns of the Budget sought to modify them to the extent of shifting the responsibility to the shoulders of the mill hands themselves, and to a dilatory Congress that was criminally negligent in so framing a cotton tariff as to make such industrial suffering possible. Nor did he omit to foully vilify the Express and calumniate its personnel.

Amid curses, screams, and despairing wails, the satanic work of ejecting the tenement dwellers went on that day. Ames’s hirelings, with loaded rifles, assisted the constables and city police in the miserable work, themselves cursing often because of the keen blasts that nipped their ears and numbed their well-cased limbs. More than one tiny, wailing babe was frozen at the breast that dull, drab afternoon, when the sun hung like a ghastly clot of human blood just above the horizon, and its weird, yellow light flitted through the snow-laden streets like gaunt spectres of death. More than one aged, toil-spent laborer, broken at the loom in the service of his insatiable master, fell prone in the drifts and lay there till his thin life-current froze and his tired heart stopped. More than one frenzied, despairing father, forgetful for the moment of the divine right of property, rushed at a guard and madly strove with him, only to be clubbed into complaisance, or, perchance, be left in a welter of crimson on the drifting snow. Carmen saw it all. She had been to see Pillette that same morning, and had been laughed from his presence. She did not understand, she was told, what miserable creatures these were that dared ask for bread and human rights. Wait; they themselves would show their true colors.

And so they did. And the color was red. And it spurted like fountains from their veins. And they saw it with dimming eyes, and were glad, for it brought sweet oblivion. That 210 night there were great fires built along the frozen creek. Shacks and tents were hastily reared; and the shivering, trembling women and babes given a desperate shelter. Then the men, sullen and grim, drew off into little groups, and into the saloons and gambling halls of the town. And when the blizzard was spent, and the cold stars were dropping their frozen light, these dull-witted things began to move, slowly at first, circling about like a great forming nebula, but gaining momentum and power with each revolution. More than a thousand strong, they circled out into the frozen streets of the little town, and up along the main thoroughfare. Their dull murmurs slowly gained volume. Their low curses welled into a roar. And then, like the sudden bursting of pent-up lava, they swept madly through the town, carrying everything to destruction before them.

Stores, shops, the bank itself, burst open before this wave of maddened humanity. Guns and pistols were thrown from laden shelves to the cursing, sweating mob below. Axes and knives were gathered by armfuls, and borne out into the streets to the whirling mass. Great barrels of liquor were rolled into the gutters and burst asunder. Bread and meat were dragged from the shops and savagely devoured. The police gathered and planted themselves with spitting pistols before the human surge. They went down like grass under stampeded cattle. Frightened clerks and operators rushed to the wires and sent wild, incoherent appeals for help to New York. Pandemonium had the reins, the carnal mind was unleashed.

On rolled the mob, straight on to the massive stone house of Pillette, the resident manager of the great Ames mills. On over the high iron fence, like hungry dock rats. On through the battered gate. On up the broad drive, shouting, shooting, moaning, raving. On over the veranda, and in through broken windows and shattered doors, swarming like flies over reeking carrion, until the flames which burst through the peaked roof of the mansion drove them forth, and made them draw sullenly, protestingly away, leaving the tattered bodies of Pillette and his wife and daughters to be consumed in the roaring furnace.

Oh, ye workers, ye toilers at loom and forge, it is indeed you who bear the world’s burdens! It is you who create the rich man’s wealth, and fight his battles. So ye fought in the great war between North and South, and protected the rich man at home, hovering in fright over his money bags. It is you who put into his hands the bayonet which he turns against you to guard his wealth and maintain his iniquitous privilege. It is indeed in your hands that the destinies of this great nation 211 lie; but what will ye do with your marvelous opportunity? What, with your stupendous, untried strength? Will ye once more set up the golden calf, and prostrate yourselves before it? Will ye again enthrone ecclesiastical despotism, and grovel before image of Virgin and Saint? Will ye raise high the powers of mediaeval darkness, and bend your necks anew to the yoke of ignorance and stagnation? But think you now that flames and dynamite will break your present bonds? Aye, America may be made a land without a pauper, without a millionaire, without industrial strife. But fire and sword will not effect the transformation. Yes, perhaps, as has been said, our “comfortable social system and its authority will some day be blown to atoms.” But shall we then be better off than we are to-day? For shall we know then how to use our precious liberty?

Blood-drunk and reeling, the mob turned from the flaming wreckage and flowed down toward the mills. There were some among them, saner, and prescient of the dire consequences of their awful work, who counseled restraint. But they were as chips in a torrent. Down into the creek bottom rolled the seething tide, with a momentum that carried it up the far side and crashing into the heavily barred oak doors of the great mills. A crushing hail of bullets fell upon them, and their leaders went down; but the mass wavered not. Those within the buildings knew that they would become carrion in the maws of the ravening wolves outside, and fought with a courage fed with desperation.

In the solemn hush of death Socrates said, “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways, I to die and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.” And mankind through the ages in their last hours have echoed this sentiment of the gentle philosopher. For all human philosophy leads to a single end––resignation.

But hunger transforms resignation into madness. And madness is murder. The frenzied hordes swarming about the Ames mills knew in their heart of hearts that death was preferable to life in death under the goad of human exploitation. But such knowledge came only in rational moments. Now they were crazed and beyond reason.

In the distance, across the swale, the sky glowed red where the souls of the agent of predatory wealth and his family had gone out in withering heat. In the stricken town, men huddled their trembling loved ones about them and stood with loaded muskets. Somewhere on the steel bands that linked this scene of carnage with the great metropolis beyond, a train plunged and roared, leaping over the quivering rails at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, bringing eager militiamen and their 212 deadly instruments of civilization. For the Ames mills were private property. And that was a divine institution.

---

In his luxurious office in the tower of the Ames building the master sat that black night, surrounded by his laboring cohorts. Though they strained under the excitement of the hour, Ames himself remained calm and determined. He was in constant communication with the Governor at Albany, and with the municipal officers of both New York and Avon. He had received the tidings of the destruction of the Pillette family with a grim smile. But the smile had crystallized into an expression of black, malignant hatred when he demanded of the Governor that the New York contingent of the state guard be sent at once to protect his property, and specified that the bullets used should be of the “dum-dum” variety. For they added to the horrors of death. Such bullets had been prohibited by the rules of modern warfare, it was true. But this was a class war. And Ames, foreseeing it all, had purchased a hundred thousand rounds of these hellish things for the militia to exchange for those which the Government furnished. And then, as an additional measure of precaution, he had sent Hood and Collins into the United States District Court and persuaded the sitting judge to issue an injunction, enjoining any possible relief committees from furnishing food and shelter to such as might enter the industrial conflict being waged against him.

Had the man gone mad? That he had! And in the blood-red haze that hung before his glittering eyes was framed the face of the girl who had spurned him but a few days before. She was the embodiment of love that had crossed his path and stirred up the very quintessence of evil within him. From the first she had drawn him. From the first she had aroused within his soul a conflict of emotions such as he had never known before. And from the night when, in the Hawley-Crowles box at the opera he had held her hand and looked down into her fathomless eyes, he had been tortured with the conflicting desires to possess that fair creature, or to utterly destroy her.

But always she had eluded him. Always she hovered just within his grasp; and then drew back as his itching fingers closed. Always she told him she loved him––and he knew she lied not. But such love was not his kind. When he loved, he possessed and used. And such love had its price––but not hers. And so hope strove with wrath, and chagrin with despair. She was a babe! Yet she conquered him. He was omnipotent in this world! Her strength she drew from the world invisible. And with it she had laid the giant low and bound him with chains.

Not so! Though he knew now that she was lost to him forever; though with foul curses he had seen hope flee; yet with it he had also bidden every tender sentiment, every last vestige of good depart from his thought forever more. And:

“–––with hope, farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good!”

That same night Hitt’s wells burned. And that night the master slept not, but sat alone at his desk in the great Fifth Avenue mansion, and plotted the annihilation of every human being who had dared oppose his worldly ambitions. Plotted, too, the further degradation and final ruin of the girl who had dared to say she loved him, and yet would not become his toy.

---

There is no need to curse the iniquitous industrial and social system upon which the unstable fabric of our civilization rests, for that system is its own fell curse in the rotting fruit it bears. A bit of that poisonous fruit had now dropped from the slimy branch at Avon. Up from the yards came the militiamen at double-quick, with rifles unslung and loaded with the satanic Ames bullets. Behind them they dragged two machine guns, capable of discharging three hundred times a minute. The mob had concentrated upon the central building of the mill group, and had just gained entrance through its shattered doors. Before them the guards were falling slowly back, fighting every inch of the way. The dead lay in heaps. The air was thick with powder smoke. One end of the building was in flames. The roar of battle was deafening.

Quickly swinging into action, the militia opened upon the mill hands. Hemmed in between two fires, the mob broke and fled down the frozen stream. The officers of the guard then ordered their men to join in the work of extinguishing the flames, which were beginning to make headway, fanned by the strong draft which swept through the long building. Until dawn they fought the stubborn fire. Then, the building saved, they pitched their tents and sought a brief rest.

At noon the soldiers were again assembled, for there remained the task of arresting the leaders of the mob and bringing them to justice. The town had been placed under martial law with the arrival of the militia. Its streets were patrolled by armed guards, and a strong cordon had been thrown around the shacks which the mill hands had hastily erected the afternoon before. And now, under the protection of a detachment of soldiers, the demand was made for the unconditional surrender of the striking laborers.

Dull terror lay like a pall over the miserable shacks huddled 214 along the dead stream. It was the dull, hopeless, numbing terror of the victim who awaits the blow from the lion’s paw in the arena. Weeping wives and mothers, clasping their little ones to them, knelt upon the frozen ground and crossed themselves. Young men drew their newly-wed mates to their breasts and kissed them with trembling lips. Stern, hard-faced men, with great, knotted hands, grouped together and looked out in deadly hatred at the heartless force surrounding them.

Then out from among them and across the ice went Carmen, up the slippery hillside, and straight to the multi-mouthed machine gun, at the side of which stood Major Camp. She had been all night with these bewildered, maddened people. She had warmed shivering babes at her own breast. She had comforted widows of a night, and newly-bereaved mothers. She had bound up gaping wounds, and had whispered tender words of counsel and advice. And they had clung to her weeping; they had called upon Virgin and Saint to bless her; and they named her the Angel of Avon––and the name would leave her no more.

“Take me,” she said, “take me into court, and let me tell all.”

The major fell back in amazement. This beautiful, well-clad girl among such miserable vermin!

“You have demanded their leaders,” she continued. “I have been trying to lead them. Leave them, and take me.”

The major’s eyes roved over her face and figure. He could make nothing out of her words, but he motioned to an aid, and bade him place the girl under arrest.

A wild shout then rose from the shacks, as Carmen moved quietly away under guard. It was the last roar of raging despair. The girl was being taken from them! A dozen men sprang out and rushed, muskets in hand, up toward the soldiers to liberate her. The major called to them to halt. Poor, dull-witted creatures! Their narrow vision could comprehend but one thing at a time; and they saw in the arrest of the girl only an additional insult piled upon their already mountainous injuries.

The major shouted a command. A roar burst from the soldiers’ rifles. It was answered by a shriek of rage from the hovels, and a murderous return fire. Then the major gave another loud command, and the machine guns began to vomit forth their clattering message of death.

At the sound of shooting, Carmen’s guard halted. Then one of them fell, pierced by a bullet from the strikers. The others released the girl, and hurried back to the battle line. Carmen stood alone for a moment. Bullets whizzed close about her.

One sang its death-song almost in her ear. Another tore through her coat. Then she turned and made her way slowly up the hill to the paralyzed town.

Down in the vale beneath, Death swung his scythe with long, sweeping strokes. The two machine guns poured a flaming sheet of lead into the little camp below. The shacks fell like houses of cards. The tents caught fire, and were whirled blazing aloft by the brisk wind. Men dropped like chaff from a mill. Hysterical, screaming women rushed hither and yon to save their young, and were torn to shreds by the merciless fusillade from above. Babes stood for a moment bewildered, and then sank with great, gaping wounds in their little, quivering bodies. And over all brooded the spirit of the great manipulator, Ames, for the protection of whose sacred rights such ghastly work is done among civilized men to-day.

---

That night, while the stars above Avon drew a veil of gray between them and the earth below, that they might not see the red embers and stark bodies, Carmen came slowly, and with bent head, into the office of the Express. As she approached Hitt’s door she heard him in earnest conversation with Haynerd.

“Yes,” the editor was saying, “I had a mortgage placed on the Express to-day, but I couldn’t get much. And it’s a short-term one, at that. Stolz refused point blank to help us, unless we would let him dictate the policy of the paper. No, he wouldn’t buy outright. He’s still fighting Ames for control of C. and R. And I learn, too, that the Ketchim case is called for next week. That probably means an attempt by Ames to smoke Stolz out through Ketchim. It also means that Carmen––”

“Yes; what about her?”

“That she will be forced to go upon the stand as a witness.”

“Well?”

“And that, as I read it, means a further effort on Ames’s part to utterly discredit her in the eyes of the world, and us through her association with the Express.”

“But––where is she, Hitt? No word from her since we got the news of the massacre at Avon this afternoon! Nothing happened to her, do you think?”

Hitt’s face was serious, and he did not answer. Then Carmen herself came through the open door. Both men rose with exclamations of gladness to welcome her. The girl’s eyes were wet, and her wonted smile had gone.

“Mr. Hitt,” she said, “I want a thousand dollars to-night.”

“Well!” Hitt and Haynerd both sat down hard.

“I must go back to Avon to-morrow,” she announced. “And the money is for the––the people down there.” Her voice caught, and her words stumbled.

The two men looked at each other blankly. Then Hitt reached out and took her hand. “Tell us,” he said, “about the trouble there to-day.”

Carmen shook her head. “No,” she said, “we will not talk about evil. You––you have the money? A thousand––”

“I have that much on deposit in the bank now, Carmen,” he replied gravely. His thought was on the mortgage which he had signed that morning.

“Then write me a check at once, and I will deposit it in the Avon bank when I get there to-morrow. I must go home now––to see mother.”

“But––let me think about it, Carmen. Money is––well, won’t less than that amount do you?”

“No, Mr. Hitt. Write the check now.”

Hitt sighed, but made no further protest. If the Express must founder, then this money were well spent on the stricken people of Avon. He took out his book, and immediately wrote the check and handed it to the girl.

“Hitt,” said Haynerd, after Carmen had left them and he had exhausted his protests over the size of the check, “something’s killing that girl! And it isn’t only the trouble at Avon, either! What is it? I believe you know.”

Hitt shook his head. “She’s no longer in this world, Ned. She left it two days ago.”

“Eh? Say! News about that RincÓn fellow?”

But Hitt would say nothing to further illuminate his cryptic remark, and Haynerd soon switched to the grim topic of the industrial war in progress at Avon.

“What are we coming to?” he cried. “What’s going to be the end? A social and industrial system such as ours, which leaves the masses to starve and consume with disease under intolerable burdens, that a handful may rot in idleness and luxury, marks us in this latest century as hopelessly insane!”

“Well, Ned, whence came the idea, think you, that it is divine justice for a majority of the people on earth to be poor in order that a few may be rich? And how are we going to get that perverted idea out of the minds of men? Will legislation do it?”

“Humph!” grunted Haynerd. “Legislation arouses no faith in me! We are suffering here because, in our immensely selfish thought of ourselves only, we have permitted the growth of such men as Ames, and allowed them to monopolize the country’s resources. Heavens! Future generations will laugh themselves 217 sick over us! Why, what sane excuse is there for permitting the commonest necessities of life to be juggled with by gamblers and unmoral men of wealth? How can we ask to be considered rational when we, with open eyes, allow ‘corners’ on foodstuffs, and permit ‘wheat kings’ to amass millions by corralling the supply of grain and then raising the price to the point where the poor washerwoman starves? Lord! We are a nation gone mad! The existence of poverty in a country like America is not only proof positive that our social system is rotten to the core, but that our religion is equally so! As a people we deserve to be incarcerated in asylums!”

“A considerable peroration, Ned,” smiled Hitt. “And yet, one that I can not refute. The only hope I see is in a radical change in the mental attitude of the so-called enlightened class––and yet they are the very worst offenders!”

“Sure! Doesn’t the militia exist for men like Ames? To-day’s work at Avon proves it, I think!”

“Apparently so, Ned,” returned Hitt sadly. “And the only possibility of a change in enlightened people is through a better understanding of what is really good and worth while. That means real, practical Christianity. And of that Ames knows nothing.”

“Seems to me, Hitt, that it ought to stagger our preachers to realize that nineteen centuries of their brand of Christianity have scarcely even begun to cleanse society. What do you suppose Borwell thinks, anyway?”

“Ned, they still cling to human law as necessarily a compelling influence in the shaping of mankind’s moral nature.”

“And go right on accepting the blood-stained money of criminal business men who have had the misfortune to amass a million dollars! And, more, they actually hold such men up as patterns for the youth to emulate! As if the chief end of endeavor were to achieve the glorious manhood of an Ames! And he a man who is deader than the corpses he made at Avon to-day!”

“The world’s ideal, my friend, has long been the man who succeeds in everything except that which is worth while,” replied Hitt. “But we have been bidden to come out from the world, and be separate. Is it not so?”

“Y––e––s, of course. But I can’t take my thought from Avon––”

“And thereby you emphasize your belief in the reality of evil.”

“Well––look at us! The Express stands for righteousness. And now we are a dead duck!”

“Then, if that is so, why not resign your position, Ned? Go seek work elsewhere.”

“No, sir! Not while the Express has a leg to stand on! Your words are an offense to me, sir!”

Hitt rose and clapped his friend heartily on the back. “Ned, old man! You’re a jewel! Things do look very dark for us, if we look only with the human sense of vision. But we are trying to look at the invisible things within. And there is only perfection there. Come, we must get to work. The Express still lives.”

“But––Carmen?”

Hitt turned and faced him. “Ned, Carmen is not in our hands. She is now completely with her God. We must henceforth wait on Him.”

---

On the following afternoon at three a little group of Avon mill hands crept past the guards and met in Father Danny’s Mission, down in the segregated vice district. They met there because they dared not go through the town to the Hall. Father Danny was with them. He had slipped into town the preceding night, and remained in hiding through the day. And Carmen was with them, too. She had gone first to the Hall, and then to the Mission, when she arrived again in the little town. And after she had deposited Hitt’s check in the bank she had asked Father Danny to call together some of the older and more intelligent of the mill hands, to discuss methods of disbursing the money.

Almost coincident with her arrival had come an order from Ames to apprehend the girl as a disturber of the peace. The hush of death lay over Avon, and even the soldiers now stood aghast at their own bloody work of the day before. Carmen had avoided the main thoroughfares, and had made her way unrecognized. At a distance she saw the town jail, heavily guarded. Its capacity had been sorely taxed, and many of the prisoners had been crowded into cold, cheerless store rooms, and placed under guards who stood ready to mow them down at the slightest threatening gesture.

“It’s come, Miss Carmen!” whispered Father Danny, after he had quietly greeted the girl. “It’s come! It may be the beginning of the great revolution we’ve all known wasn’t far off! I just had to get back here! They can only arrest me, anyway. And, oh, God! my poor, poor people!”

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. But soon he sprang to his feet. “No time for mollycoddling!” he exclaimed. “Come, men, we’ll give you checks, and do you get food for the babies. Only, don’t buy of the company stores!”

“We’ll have to, Father,” said one of them. “It’s dangerous not to.”

“But they’ve never taken cash from you there, ye know. Only your pay scrip.”

“Aye, Father, and they’ve discounted that ten per cent each time. But if we bought at other stores we were discharged. And now we’d be blacklisted.”

“Ah, God, that’s true!” exclaimed the priest. “But now then, Miss Carmen, we’ll begin.”

For an hour the girl wrote small checks, and the priest handed them out to the eager laborers. They worked feverishly, for they knew that at any moment they might be apprehended.

“Ah, you men!” cried Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself. “Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters! But then, ye’re so ignorant!”

“Don’t, Father!” pleaded Carmen, “don’t! They have suffered so much!”

“Ah, lass, it’s but love that I’m dealin’ out to ’em, God knows! And yet, it’s they that are masters of the situation, only they don’t know it! There’s the pity! They’ve no leaders, except such as waste their money and leave ’em in the ditch! The world’s social schemes, Miss Carmen, don’t reach such as these. They’re only sops. And they’ve got the contempt of the wage-earners.”

“The Church, Father, could do much for these people, if––”

“Don’t hesitate, Miss Carmen. You mean, if we didn’t give all our thought to the rich, eh? But still, it’s wholly up to the people themselves, after all. And, mark me, when they do rise, why, such men as Ames won’t know what’s hit ’em!”

The door was thrown violently open at that moment, and a squad of soldiers under the command of a lieutenant entered.

Carmen and Father Danny rose and faced them. The mill hands stood like stone images, their faces black with suppressed rage. The lieutenant halted his men, and then advanced to the girl.

“Is a woman named Carmen Ariza here?” he demanded rudely.

“I am she,” replied the fearless girl.

“Come with us,” he said in a rough voice.

“That she will not!” cried Father Danny, suddenly pulling the girl back and thrusting himself before her.

The lieutenant raised his hand. The soldiers advanced. The mill hands quickly formed about the girl. And then, with a yell of rage, they threw themselves upon the soldiers.

For a few minutes the little room was a bedlam. The crazed strikers fought without weapons, except such as they could wrest from the soldiers. But they fought to the death. One of them seized Carmen and threw her beneath the table at which she had been working. Above her raged the desperate conflict. The shouting and cursing might have been heard for blocks around. Father Danny stood in front of the table, beneath which lay the girl. He strove desperately to maintain his position, that he might protect her, meantime frantically calling to the mill hands to drag her out to the rear, and escape by the back door.

In the midst of the mÊlÉe a soldier mounted a chair near the door and raised his rifle. The shot roared out, and Father Danny pitched forward to the floor. Another shot, and still another followed in quick succession. The strikers fell back. Confusion seized them. Then they turned and fled precipitately through the rear exit.

The lieutenant dragged Carmen from beneath the table and out through the door. Then, assembling his men, he gave an order, and they marched away with her up the icy street to the town jail.

---