incerest beliefs."

"Ah, I see," said Merle. His tone was grim. Then he broke into a dry,
bitter laugh. "The interests prevail!"

"Looks like it," said Sharon, and he, too, laughed dryly.

"If you would only try to get our point of view," broke in Harvey D. "We
feel--"

He was superbly silenced by Merle, who in his best _New Dawn_ manner
exposed the real truth. The dollar trembled on its throne, the fat
bourgeoisie--he spared a withering glance for Sharon, who was the only
fat Whipple in the world--would resort to brutal force to silence those
who saw the truth and were brave enough to speak it out.

"It's the age-old story," he went on, again sweeping the lock of hair
from before his flashing glance. "Privilege throttles truth where it
can. I should have expected nothing else; I have long known there was no
soil here that would nourish our ideals. I couldn't long hope for
sympathy from mere exploiters of labour. But the die is cast. God
helping me, I must follow the light."

The last was purely rhetorical, for no one on the staff of the _New
Dawn_ believed that God helped any one. Indeed, it was rather felt that
God was on the side of privilege. But the speaker glowed as he achieved
his period.

"If you would only try to get our point of view," again suggested Harvey
D., as he straightened the Reading From Homer.

"I cannot turn aside."

"Meaning?" inquired Sharon Whipple.

"Meaning that we cannot accept another dollar of tainted money for our
great work," said Merle, crisply.

"Oh," said Sharon, "but that's what your pa just told you! You accepted
it till he shut off on you."

"Against my better judgment and with many misgivings," returned the
apostle of light. "Now we can go to the bitter end with no false sense
of obligation."

"But your magazine will have to stop, I fear," interposed Gideon gently.

Merle smiled wanly, shaking his head the while as one who contradicts
from superior knowledge.

"You little know us," he retorted when the full effect of the silent,
head-shaking smile had been had. "The people are at last roused. Money
will pour in upon us. Money is the last detail we need think of. Our
movement is solidly grounded. We have at our back"--he glanced defiantly
at each of the three Whipples--"an awakened proletariat."

"My!" said Gideon.

"You are out of the current here," explained Merle, kindly. "You don't
suspect how close we are to revolution. Yet that glorious rising of our
com