"No!" thundered Granville--"not by him, nor any one like him. Damn
him!"

Tom Peel's grin widened still further into an intense but silent
laugh.

Meantime Ellen was walking with Abby and Maria.

"I wonder how we're going to get along with young Lloyd," said Abby.

Ellen looked at her keenly. "Why?" she said.

"Oh, I heard the men talking the other night after I'd gone to bed.
Maybe it isn't true that he's thinking of cutting down the wages."

"It can't be," said Ellen.

"I say so, too," said Maria.

"Well, I hope not," said Abby. "You can't tell. Some chimneys always
have the wind whistling in them, and I suppose it's about so with a
boot and shoe shop. It don't follow that there's going to be a
hurricane."

They had come to the entrance of the street where the Atkins sisters
lived, and Ellen parted from them.

She kept on her way quite alone. They had walked slowly, and the
other operatives had either boarded cars or had gone out of sight.

Ellen, when she turned, faced the northwest, out of which a stiff
wind was blowing. She thrust a hand up each jacket-sleeve, folding
her arms, but she let the fierce wind smite her full in the face
without blenching. She had a sort of delight in facing a wind like
that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The
sidewalk was frozen. There was no snow, and the day before there had
been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary
stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of
labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city
was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the
advance of the whole world. Ellen did not think of that, for she was
occupied with more personal considerations, thinking of the dead
woman in the great Lloyd house. She pictured her lying dead on that
same bed whereon she had seen her husband lie dead. All the ghastly
concomitants of death came to her mind. "They will turn off all that
summer heat, and leave her alone in this freezing cold," she
thought. She remembered the sound of that other woman's kind voice
in her ears, and she saw her face when she told her the dreadful
news of her husband's death. She felt a sob rising in her throat,
but forced it back. What Abby had told concerning Mrs. Lloyd's
happiness in the face of death seemed to her heart-breaking, though
she knew not why. That enormous, almost transcendent trust in that
which was absolutely unknown