at these women. What is their
loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life
whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when
you want it? Tragedy! Come here,--let me hear what you call this."

He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old
woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,--wakening now and then,
to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.

"You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of
course not,--what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved
him,--you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herself
to death,--a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her.
You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead.--Is Hetty
here?"

The woman got up.

"She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She's lookin' foine in her Sunday suit.
Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say."

She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board,
a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen,
almost a child, lay underneath, dead,--her lithe, delicate figure
decked out in a dirty plaid skirt, and stained velvet bodice,--her neck
and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its
sleep,--the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margret
leaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's
dead neck.

"How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young she
is!--What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margret's lips move.

"'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'"

"Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her
dead face. Is your loss like hers?" he said lower, looking into the
dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it.

"Let me go," she said. "I am tired."

He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly
enough,--for the girl suffered, he saw.

"What will you do?" he asked her then. "It is not too late,--will you
help me save these people?"

She wrung her hands helplessly.

"What do you want with me?" she cried. "I have enough to bear."

The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; the
man's face in the wall light showed a terrible life-purpose coming out
bare.

"I want you to do your work. It is hard, it will wear out your
strength and brain and heart. Give yourself to these people. God calls
y