rture. "If he does not give in and raise the
wages, I shall hate him," thought Ellen; and her heart stung her as
if at the touch of a hot iron, and then she could have struck
herself for the supposition that he would not give in. "He must,"
she told herself, with a great fervor of love. "He must."

But when she went down to breakfast the next morning her mother
stared at her sharply.

"Ellen Brewster, what is the matter with you?" she cried.

"Nothing. Why?"

"Nothing! You look like a ghost."

"I feel perfectly well," said Ellen. She made an effort to eat as
much breakfast as usual in order that her mother should not suspect
that she was troubled. When at last she set out for the factory, in
the early morning dusk, she was chilled and trembling with
excitement.

The storm had quite ceased, and there was a pale rose-and-violet
dawn-light in the east, and presently came effects like
golden-feathered shafts shooting over the sky. The road was alive
with shovelling men, construction-cars of the railroad company were
laboring back and forth to clear the tracks, householders were
making their way from their doors to their gates, clearing their
paths, lifting up the snow in great, glittering, blue-white blocks
on their clumsy shovels. Everywhere were the factory employes
hastening to their labor; the snow was dropping from the overladen
tree branches in great blobs; there was an incessant, shrill chatter
of people, and occasional shouts. It was the rally of mankind after
a defeat by a primitive force of nature. It was the eternal
reassertion of human life and a higher organization over the
elemental. Men who had walked doggedly the morning before now moved
with a spring of alacrity, although the road was very heavy. There
was a new light in their eyes; their cheeks glowed. Ellen had no
doubt whatever that if Robert Lloyd had not yielded the attitude of
the employes of Lloyd's would be one of resistance. She herself
seemed to breathe in resistance to tyranny, and strength for the
right in every breath of the clear, crisp morning air. She felt as
if she could trample on herself and her own weakness, for the sake
of justice and the inalienable good of her kind, with as little
hesitation as she trampled on the creaking snow. Yet she trembled
with that deadly chill before a sense of impending fate. When she
returned the salutations of her friends on the road she felt that
her lips were stiff.

"You look dreadful queer, E