d through the works. A phrase from Edwin Markham's "The Hoe-Man
in the Making" kept ringing through his head. It ran as follows--"It is
in the glass-factory perhaps, that the child is pushed most hopelessly
under the blind hammer of greed," and the boy wondered whether this
especial works was one of those which the poet-author had visited. Owing
to the number of times Hamilton had been forced to go to this factory,
two or three of the men had come to know him by sight, and they nodded
now as he passed through. Noticing a boy that looked even younger than
himself,--for unconsciously his eye was seeking that of which he was
thinking,--he turned to one of the men who had nodded to him, and said
casually, and with an air of surprise:

"Why, that chap there doesn't look any older than me!"

"I don't suppose he is so very old," the man replied, "sixteen, maybe."

"Seems a shame to have to start in so young," Hamilton went on, with an
assumed air of carelessness, "and I suppose he's been here some years."

"Probably about four or five," was the reply.

"You know," continued Hamilton, in a conversational tone, "I should
think it would be hard for a boy to start in working like that, and at
night especially."

The man paused in his work an instant, and looked at the lad, passing
his hand over his forehead as he did so.

"I was just ten years old when I began," he said. "I'm only thirty now.
I look fifty, don't I?"

"You certainly look over thirty," Hamilton admitted.

"Oh, I look fifty all right, I know that, and I'm as nearly played out
as a man of fifty. And it's all due to work when I was a youngster.
Every year that a boy is put to hard physical work before he is sixteen
is equal to five years taken off his life."

"I wonder that any employer does it, and that any State permits it,"
said Hamilton.

"There's not as much of it in Connecticut as in other States, although
the figures show that it is growing here," was the reply. "But you talk
as though you had been having a session with 'the crusader,'" the
workman continued.

"Who's the crusader?" asked Hamilton.

"Haven't you seen him, then? With your ideas, you ought to get along
well together. And," he added, more seriously, "'the crusader' will be
heard of yet."

"Why?"

"He's a boy who started at work in this place when he was only seven
years old," the workman answered. "He's been here eight years now, and
he's an odd genius. He taught himself to read a