er
directions. The men flatly refused to work another minute, and went
out in a body. I don't blame them much. Robert, don't you believe God
will punish you for keeping the shops open on Sunday?"

"Nonsense, Mary," replied Mr. Hardy; yet there was a shadow of
uneasiness in his tone. "The work has got to go on. It is a work of
necessity. Railroads are public servants; they can't rest Sundays."

"Then when God tells the world that it must not work on Sundays, He
does not mean railroad men? The Fourth Commandment ought to read,
'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, except all ye men who work
for railroads. Ye haven't any Sunday.'"

"Mary, I didn't come from one sermon to listen to another. You're
worse than Mr. Jones."

Mr. Hardy half rose on the lounge and leaned on his elbow, looking at
his wife with every mark of displeasure on his face. Yet as he looked,
somehow there stole into his thought the memory of the old New England
home back in the Vermont Hills, and the vision of that quiet little
country village where Mary and he had been brought up together. He
seemed to see the old meeting-house on the hill, at the end of a long,
elm-shaded street that straggled through the village, and he saw
himself again as he began to fall in love with Mary, the beauty of the
village; and he had a vision of one Sunday when, walking back from
church by Mary's side, he had asked her to be his wife. It seemed to
him that a breath of the meadow just beyond Squire Hazen's place came
into the room, just as it was wafted up to him when Mary turned and
said the happy word that made that day the gladdest, proudest day he
had ever known. What, memories of the old times! What!

He seemed to come to himself, and stared around into the fire as if
wondering where he was, and he did not see the tear that rolled down
his wife's cheek and fell upon her two hands clasped in her lap. She
arose and went over to the piano, which stood in the shadow, and
sitting down, with her back to her husband, she played fragments of
music nervously. Mr. Hardy lay down on the lounge again. After a
while Mrs. Hardy wheeled about on the piano stool and said:

"Robert, don't you think you had better go over and see Mr. Burns about
the men who were hurt?"

"Why, what can I do about it? The company's doctor will see to them.
I should only be in the way. Did Burns say they were badly hurt?"

"One of them had his eyes put out, and another will