ll you, there's something wrong that no talk of '_Liberte_' or
'_Egalite_' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who
do the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing
more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,
reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He pointed to
Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. "So many nerves to sting them to
pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into
your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"

"You think you could govern the world better?" laughed the Doctor.

"I do not think at all."

"That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
deep enough to find bottom, eh?"

"Exactly," rejoined Kirby. "I do not think. I wash my hands of all
social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my
operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside
of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more
popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible."

The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.

"God help us! Who is responsible?"

"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who pays
them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or
butcher who takes it?"

"And yet," said Mitchell's cynical voice, "look at her! How hungry she
is!"

Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, "What
shall we do to be saved?" Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight of
brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.

"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
air of an amused spectator at a play. "Are you answered?"--turning to
Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.

Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare
mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the
two.

"Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! '_De profundis clamavi_.' Or,
to quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And
so Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby!
Very clear the answer, too!--I think I reme