ll of lounging men with clean faces
and hands. It was like Sunday. Ernest went to work in his father's
store. Roger spent the morning in the office with his father. In the
afternoon he circulated among the men. At first many of them resented
this. Naturally enough they looked on the boy as his father's spy.

But Moore had nothing to conceal nor had the men. Roger was intelligent
and thoughtful far beyond his years, and little by little the men got
in the habit of debating with him the merits of the case.

Roger forgot that summer that he was a boy. Even at Saturday afternoon
baseball, his mind was struggling with a problem whose ramifications
staggered his immature mind.

Ole Oleson, the forge boss, talked more intelligibly, Roger thought,
than any of the others. There was a bench outside the picket fence that
surrounded Ole's house, and Ole's house was not a stone's throw from the
forge shed. Here nearly every afternoon Ole, with some of the strike
leaders, would gather, and when not throwing quoits in front of the
shed, they would talk of the strike.

Roger, his heavy black hair tossed back from his face, his blue eyes
thoughtful, his boyish lips compressed in the effort to understand,
seldom missed a session. The strike had lasted nearly a month when he
said to Ole.

"My father says that if the strike isn't over in two weeks, he's
ruined."

"That's a dirty lie!" exclaimed a German named Emil.

Before Roger's ready fist could land, Ole had pulled the boy back to the
bench.

"What's the good of that!" said Ole. "Emil, this kid's no liar. Don't be
so free with your gab."

There was silence for a few moments. The group of men on the bench
stared obstinately at the boy Roger and Roger stared at the group of
factory buildings. Unpretentious buildings they were, of wood or brick,
one-story and rambling. John Moore had bought in marsh land and as he
slowly reclaimed it by filling with ashes from his furnaces, he as
slowly added to the floor space of his factory. Roger could remember the
erection of every addition, excepting the first, which was made when he
was only a baby. He knew what the factory meant to John Moore and with
sudden bitterness he cried,

"I don't see what good it will do you to ruin my father!"

"'Twon't do us no good," returned Ole. "He ain't going to be ruined.
Look here already, Rog. I got a girl, your age. She goes in your class.
What kind of girl is she?"

"She's a smart girl. Smart as