ired," cried Abby Atkins. "I don't say
that I'm striking, but I'd strike for all a nearseal cape. I'm
ashamed of you."

"I don't care if you be," said the girl, tossing her head. "A
nearseal cape means as much to me as some other things to you. I
want Ellen Brewster to hold her tongue."

"Ellen Brewster will hold her tongue or not, just as she has a mind
to," responded Abby, with a snap. She did not like Sadie Peel.

"Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble."

"I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that," declared
Abby.

Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little
Maria clinging closely to her. Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh
and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she
heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.

"They don't mean to strike," she told herself. "They mean to
submit."

All went to their tasks as usual. In a minute after the whistle blew
the great pile was in the full hum of labor. Ellen stood for a few
moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her
way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench
cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice. She
pressed close to him, while the men around stared.

"What is going to be done?" she asked, in a low voice.

Sargent turned and looked at her in a troubled fashion, and spoke in
a pacific, soothing tone, as her father might have done. He was much
older than Ellen.

"Now look here, child," he said, "I don't dare take the
responsibility of urging all these men into starvation this kind of
weather. The times are hard. Lloyd has some reason--"

Ellen walked away from him swiftly and went to the row of
lasting-machines where Amos Lee and Tom Peel stood. She walked up to
them and spoke in a loud, clear voice.

"You are not going to give in?" said she. "You don't mean to give
in?"

Lee turned and gave her one stare, and left his machine.

"Not another stitch of work will I do under this new wage-list, so
help me, God!" he proclaimed.

Tom Peel stood for a second like an automaton, staring at them both.
Then he turned back to his post.

"I'm with ye," he said.

The lasters, for some occult reason, were always the most turbulent
element in Lloyd's. In less than three minutes the enthusiasm of
revolt had spread, and every laster had left his machine. In a
half-hour more there was an exodus of workmen from Lloyd'