them were aware that some change had taken place in him.
It had been whispered about that he had arranged matters for the men
injured in the Sunday accident so that they would not suffer for anything.

The grimy, hard-muscled, hard-featured crowd of eight hundred men all
turned their eyes upon the figure standing erect and pale-faced on the
great planer, and he in turn looked out through the blue murky atmosphere
at them with an intensity of expression which none in that audience
understood. As Mr. Hardy went on with his speech they began to
understand what that look meant.

"My brothers," began the manager, with a slight tremble in the words so
new to him, "as this may be the last time I shall ever speak to you, I
want to say what I feel I owe to you. For twenty-five years I have
carried on the work in this place without any thought of the eight
hundred men in these shops, except as their names were on the pay roll of
the company. It never made any difference to me when your wives and
children grew sick and died; I never knew what sort of houses you lived
in, except that in comparison with mine they must have been very crowded
and uncomfortable. For all these twenty-five years I have been as
indifferent to you as a man possibly could be to men who work for him.
It has not occurred to me during this time that I could be anything else.
I have been too selfish to see my relation to you and act upon it.

"Now I do not call you in here to-day to apologise for twenty-five years
of selfishness--not that alone; but I do want you to know that I have
been touched by the hand of God in such a way that before it is too late
I want to call you all 'brothers.' I ask that when you think of me
hereafter it may be as I am now, to-day, not as I have been in all the
past years.

"It is not for me to say how far or in what manner I have trampled on the
brotherhood of the race. I have called myself a Christian. I have been
a member of a church. Yet I confess here to-day that under the authority
granted me by the company I have more than once dismissed good, honest,
faithful workmen in large bodies, and cut down wages unnecessarily to
increase dividends, and have thought of the human flesh and blood in
these shops as I have thought of the iron and steel here. I confess all
that and more. Whatever has been un-Christian I hope will be forgiven.

"There are many things we do to our fellow-men in this world which
abide--the sting