y
with his foot, and how he has crawled upon his belly before the rich and
great. I will tell you something about Mr. Orme. It does not apply to
all of you. Some of you, thank God! have remembered that your working
men were human beings like yourselves--you have helped and befriended
the sick and the poor, you have pensioned the closing years of faithful
men. You have called yourselves to ask for our sick and dying, and we
have blessed you for it. What poor burdened hearts want is the warm
heart touch from your own hands or lips, but Mr. Orme has given neither
the one nor the other.

"Mr. Orme, do you remember Dick Draper, who was your boss carder, and
who lives in a little house behind your mansion? Do you remember that he
worked for you ten or fifteen years, and that you discharged him because
he would not leave the Union?"

"Yes, I remember him. Why?" answered Orme huskily.

"I will tell you why. A few months after you discharged him, partly
because his health failed and partly because you blackballed him at all
other shops, he was still out of work, his money all gone, his pantry
bare, and his youngest boy dying of a slow disease of the spine. Some of
us went to you and asked you to help us raise enough to send him to
Montreal for treatment that might save his life. You showed us the door,
and told us to tell him he could make his money like you made yours. You
said if the boy died it would be one mouth less for Dick to feed, and
told us there was a grand old maxim about every man for himself and the
devil have the hindermost. As we were going down your splendid avenue,
you shouted that Dick's spine was stiff enough when he joined the Union.
Then you asked us if spines were hereditary. Then you laughed and your
barns and your grand driving sheds echoed back its cruel mockery."

Orme arose and started towards the door.

"Mr. Chairman, I protest," he began.

"Sit doon," thundered Angus, lapsing into his native tongue, "sit doon
till I tell ye a'. The nicht Dick's boy was deein', we went to ye and
begged ye to stop yir music and yir dancin'. For ye had some graun' fowk
at yir pairty, an' the flowers for it cost ye mair nor wad hae sent the
laddie to Montreal. An' the noise fashed an' fretted the deein' bairn.
But ye bade us begone, an' said ye'd invite us to yir pairty when ye
wanted us--an' the puir laddie dee'd in his faither's airms to the cruel
music o' yir fiddles an' yir reels, an' his faither sat wi' him a