ds from the
girl's mouth. She bent before it involuntarily, and the conviction
forced itself upon her that, after all, resistance to injustice
might be as futile as resistance to storm, that injustice might be
one of the primal forces of the world, and one of the conditions of
its endurance, and yet with the conviction came the renewed
resolution to resist.

"What can poor men do against capital unless they are backed up by
some labor organization?" asked Granville. "And I don't believe
there are a dozen in the factory who belong to the union. There has
been an understanding, without his ever saying so that I know of,
that the old boss didn't approve of it. So lots of us kept out of
it, we wanted work so bad. What can we do against such odds?"

"When right is on your side, you have all the odds," said Ellen,
looking back over her snow-powdered shoulder.

"Then you would strike?"

"I wouldn't submit."

"Well, I don't know how the boys feel," said Granville. "I suppose
we'll have to talk it over."

"I shouldn't need to talk it over," said Ellen. "You've gone past
your house, Granville."

"I ain't going to let you go home alone in such a storm as this,"
said Granville, in a tender voice, which he tried to make facetious.
"I wouldn't let any girl go home alone in such a storm."

Ellen stopped short. "I don't want you to go home with me, thank
you, Granville," she said. "Your mother will have supper ready, and
I can go just as well alone."

"Ellen, I won't let you go alone," said the young man, as a wilder
gust came. "Suppose you should fall down?"

"Fall down!" repeated Ellen, with a laugh, but her regard of the
young man, in spite of her rebuff, was tender. He touched her with
his unfailing devotion; the heavy trudging by her side of this poor
man meant, she told herself, much more than the invitation of the
rich one to ride behind his bays in his luxurious sleigh. This meant
the very bone and sinew of love. She held out her little, mittened
hand to him.

"Good-night, Granville," she said.

Granville caught it eagerly. "Oh, Ellen," he murmured.

But she withdrew her hand quickly. "We have always been good
friends, and we always will be," said she, and her tone was
unmistakable. The young man shrank back.

"Yes, we always will, Ellen," he said, in a faithful voice, with a
note of pain in it.

"Good-night," said Ellen again.

"Good-night," responded Granville, and turned his plodding back on
the girl