engineer, and tell him to shut down," said
Robert.

"You ain't going to turn them out, after all?" gasped Flynn. He was
deadly white.

"No, I am not. I only want to speak to them," replied Robert,
shortly.

When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the
employes, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and
menace. They anticipated the worst by this order.

"I want to say to you all," said Robert, in a loud, clear voice,
"that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with
the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per
cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business
improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard
times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to
employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I
will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any
measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business
improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former
standard at once."

The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish.
Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous
and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man. The workmen
stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus
of "Thank ye's," with two or three shrill crows of cheers.

Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work
recommenced.

"He's the right sort, after all," said Granville Joy to John
Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it. He was very
thin and pale. He had suffered privations, and now came additional
worry of mind. He could not help thinking that this might bring
about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his
spiritual dues at any cost.

"It's no more than he ought to do," growled a man at Granville's
right. "S'pose he does lose a little money?"

"It ain't many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a
little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that," said
John Sargent. He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking
with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his
sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so
pinched. He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of
the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the
necessities of others had almost forced him ther