he virtual death-thrust to the middle
class. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it had been
done. He shook his head ominously and looked forward without hope to the
fall elections.

"It's no use," he said. "We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here. I had
hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong. Wickson
was right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the Iron
Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolution
of the working class. Of course we will win, but I shudder to think of
it."

And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this he was
in advance of his party. His fellow-socialists could not agree with him.
They still insisted that victory could be gained through the elections.
It was not that they were stunned. They were too cool-headed and
courageous for that. They were merely incredulous, that was all. Ernest
could not get them seriously to fear the coming of the Oligarchy. They
were stirred by him, but they were too sure of their own strength. There
was no room in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy,
therefore the Oligarchy could not be.

"We'll send you to Congress and it will be all right," they told him at
one of our secret meetings.

"And when they take me out of Congress," Ernest replied coldly, "and put
me against a wall, and blow my brains out--what then?"

"Then we'll rise in our might," a dozen voices answered at once.

"Then you'll welter in your gore," was his retort. "I've heard that song
sung by the middle class, and where is it now in its might?"

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Mr. Wickson did not send for father. They met by chance on the
ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that the warning he gave father was not
premeditated. Had they not met accidentally, there would not have been
any warning. Not that the outcome would have been different, however.
Father came of stout old Mayflower* stock, and the blood was imperative
in him.

* One of the first ships that carried colonies to America,
after the discovery of the New World. Descendants of these
original colonists were for a while inordinately proud of
their genealogy; but in time the blood became so widely
diffused that it ran in the veins practically of all
Americans.

"Ernest was right," he told me, as soon as he had returned home. "Ernest
is a very remarkable young man, and I'd rather see you hi