er the awkward lout, stolidly
working at uncongenial toil. He had a hope, a purpose, a plan, and his
sometimes sullen face was transformed into manly alertness and strength.

From that time on he forgot his burns, and Nature took them in hand,
healing the broken flesh in her most clean cut fashion. Scarcely a scar
remained, and on the day he received the brief notice that his plans
were accepted it seemed as if the scars fell from his soul also, leaving
it cleaner, stronger, better. He had found his rightful work, and that
is inspiration to any man.

CHAPTER IX.

DAN.

Factory hours were over, and Dan Price issued from the heated place, his
old coat over his arm, and his neck bared to what little breeze there
was, as he turned his moist face in the direction of home. There was no
loitering among the boys, no waiting for any special girl.

Dan had no boon companions, no home ties, no courting to carry on. He
"kept company" with no one but himself. The one room he called home was
in one of the houses still untouched by the changes going on, a remnant
of the once ugly row, now largely broken into, but not wholly destroyed.

For, with that perversity of inanimate things which attends every large
enterprise to retard in every possible manner, through bad weather, the
non-arrival of needed materials, loss, breakage, accident, and the
"soldiering" of the workmen, many hindrances had arisen, and while
wonders had been accomplished much remained to be done. But what had
tried Joyce almost beyond endurance was to find that her greatest
opposition came from the people she was trying to benefit. Often she
found herself, through her builders, butting against a wall of human
perversity and stupidity fairly insurmountable.

More than one family, and these in the poorest homes, utterly refused to
allow of any improvements, resisting the entrance of the workmen, as if
this were an armed incursion of some enemy. In vain Dalton explained
that it was only to make them more comfortable, that it should not cost
them a penny, that the discomforts of a week, a month, would change
their barracks into modern homes. They sullenly defied him to interfere,
and would none of these "new-fangled notions" he tried to describe in
glowing terms.

"'Tain't fair, boss, and we ain't going to stand it!" shouted one man
from his door-step, rotting from the misdirected leakage of the roof.
"If we keep the rent paid up you've no right to distur