ry centre for a pastoral and agricultural district,
but a busy industrial town, where the manufacturing interests were as
important as the farming interests; where every morning a stream of
workers flowed from the outside suburbs into the town; where there was
bustle and noise and confusion; where money circulated freely; where men
grew rich and proud in the power of their money bags. A happier Grey
Town? Perhaps not quite so contented as the lazy, easy-going, and
self-satisfied Grey Town, as Denis Quirk had found it, for here
comparative poverty stood side by side with riches, and suffered in the
contrast.

Prosperity had come to the town on sound lines, thanks to Denis Quirk.
He had provided that riches should not be accumulated in Grey Town at
the expense of suffering and discomfort to the poor. It was thanks to
him, so the Grey Towners said, that the factory area was separated from
the residential portion of the town. They also hinted in Grey Town that
he was largely responsible for the Government Bill, compelling
landlords to provide their tenants with sufficient space for a garden
and yard of greater extent than one might swing a cat in. There were
others in it, Grey Town acknowledged that; but their Member, their Denis
Quirk, was the prime mover.

He was rich now, and happy, but I may safely say that no poor man paused
beside his gate to hurl a curse at the oppressor of the unfortunate. He
still had enemies--his determined and combative nature made that
unavoidable--but his enemies were of those who had been prevented from
exploiting the poor by his agency. These termed him an enemy to
progress, their notions of progress being summed up in self-progress.
And they vowed that "that demagogue Quirk" should go out when the
country recovered its mental equilibrium, lost for the time in an absurd
humanitarianism. He was in his garden, sitting on a garden seat, with a
book in his hand, but work had been declared an insult by the two rosy
rogues, a boy and a girl, by the way, who had escaped from Nurse, now
vainly seeking them in the house. Kathleen was beside her husband,
watching in an amused manner the subservience of the master of men to
the children.

Kathleen, the elder, was a copy of her mother; Denis, the boy, promised
to be as good as his father; singly, they were powerful; united, as
to-day, they were irresistible. And they had decided that "Daddy" must
play a game with them, and the game should be hide and