k bonnet.

"Is he in there?" she asked, in a strained voice, pointing to the
shop.

Fanny stared at her. She was half dazed. She did not know whether
she was referring to the wounded man or Robert.

Andrew was quicker in his perceptions.

"They carried him off to the hospital in the ambulance," he told
her. Then he added, as gently as if he had been addressing Ellen: "I
guess he wasn't hurt so very bad. He came to before they took him
away."

"You don't know anything about it," Fanny said, sharply. "I heard
them say something about his eyes."

"His eyes!" gasped Cynthia. She held tightly to Fanny, who looked at
her with a sudden passion of sympathy breaking through her
curiosity.

"Oh, I guess he wasn't hurt so very bad; he _did_ come to. I heard
him speak," she said, soothingly. She laid her hard hand over
Cynthia's slim one.

"They took him to the hospital?"

"Yes, in the ambulance."

"Is--my nephew in there?"

"No; he went with him."

Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter
anguish and pleading.

"Look here," said Fanny; "the hospital ain't very far from here.
Suppose we go up there and ask how he is? We could call out your
nephew."

"Will you go with me?" asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.

If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have
recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood. She
was an utter surprise to Fanny, but her sympathy leaped to meet her
need like the steel to the magnet.

"Of course I will," she said, heartily.

"I would," said Andrew--"I would go with her, Fanny."

"Of course I will," said Fanny; "and you had better go home, I
guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire. I don't know but
the dampers are all wide open."

Fanny and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital,
and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked
thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd's. The battle was over
and the strike was ended. He drew a great sigh, and went home to see
to the kitchen fire.

Chapter LVIII

Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had
reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the
reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely
recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples,
her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and
clutched his arm.

"How is he?" she demanded. "Tell me