conditions, better tenements, shorter hours,
and very much higher wages. Also the enforcement of the child labor
law, I am sorry to say."

"They don't dare!" shouted Ames.

"But, after all, Mr. Ames, you know you have said that it would
strengthen your case with Congress if there should be a strike at
Avon."

"But not now! Not now!" cried Ames. "It would ruin everything! I am
distinctly out of favor with the President--owing to that little negro
wench! And Congress is going against me if I lose Gossitch, Logue, and
Mall! That girl has put me in bad down there! Wales is beginning to
threaten! By G--"

"But, Mr. Ames, she can be removed, can she not?"

"Violence would still further injure us. But--if we can drive the
Express upon the shoals, and then utterly discredit that girl, either
in the libel suit or the Ketchim trial, why, then, with a little show
of bettering things at Avon, we'll get what we want. But we've got
work before us. Say, is--is Sidney with the Express?" he added
hesitatingly.

Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his
master. Was it possible that Ames--

"You heard my question, Mr. Hood?"

"I--I beg pardon! Yes, sir--Sidney is still with them. He--a--they say
he has quite conquered his--his--"

"You mean, he's no longer a sot?" Ames asked brutally. "Out with it,
man! Don't sit there like a smirking Chinese god!"

"Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and
that the--that girl--did it," stammered the nervous lawyer.

Ames's mouth jerked open--and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His
head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus
enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.

Alone sat the man of gold--ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone
with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims.
Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his
mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of
absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the
realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose
ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.

Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of
countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he
had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the
bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gros