umbling voice. "It's easy to talk when you 'ain't got a wife and
five children dependent on you."

"That's so," said another man, doggedly.

"That has nothing to do with it," said Ellen, firmly. "We can all
club together, and keep the wolf from the door for those who are
hardest pressed for a while; and as for me, if I were a man--"

She paused a minute. When she spoke again her voice was full of
childlike enthusiasm; it seemed to ring like a song.

"If I were a man," said she, "I would go out in the street and
dig--I would beg, I would steal--before I would yield--I, a free man
in a free country--to tyranny like this!"

There was a great round of applause at that. Dennison scowled and
said something in a low voice to another foreman at his side. Flynn
laughed, with a perplexed, admiring look at Ellen.

"The question is," said Tom Peel, slouching on the outskirts of the
throng, and speaking in an imperturbable, compelling, drawling
voice, "whether the free men in the free country are going to kick
themselves free, or into tighter places, by kicking."

"If you have got to stop to count the cost of bravery and standing
up for your rights, there would be no bravery in the world,"
returned Ellen, with disdain.

"Oh, I am ready to kick," said Peel, with his mask-like smile.

"So am I," said Granville Joy, in a loud voice. Amos Lee came
rushing through the crowd to Ellen's side. He had been eating his
dinner in another room, and had just heard what was going on. He
opened his mouth with a motion as of letting loose a flood of
ranting, but somebody interposed. John Sargent, bulky and
irresistible in his steady resolution, put him aside and stood
before him.

"Look here," he said to them all. "There may be truth in what Miss
Brewster says, but we must not act hastily; there is too much at
stake. Let us appoint a committee and go to see Mr. Lloyd this
evening, and remonstrate on the cutting of the wages." He turned to
Ellen in a kindly, half-paternal fashion. "Don't you see it would be
better?" he said.

She looked at him doubtfully, her cheeks glowing, her eyes like
stars. She was freedom and youth incarnate, and rebellious against
all which she conceived as wrong and tyrannical. She could hardly
admit, in her fire of enthusiasm, of pure indignation, of any
compromise or arbitration. All the griefs of her short life, she had
told herself, were directly traceable to the wrongs of the system of
labor and capital,