y that message to the
men, if you wish. Let me know as soon as you can what you find."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI.

HELEN AND THE STRIKE LEADER'S WIFE.

But what had become of Helen Nash?

It was a very determined little woman who stole out of the Stanlock
residence, with the contents of the last threatening letter fresh in
her memory, after the return of the members of Flamingo Camp Fire from
their Sunday afternoon drive. She walked briskly four blocks east and
boarded a street car.

A twenty-minutes' ride took her into the heart of the mining tenement
district. Reference to an address memorandum on a slip of paper that
she carried in her handbag and a question to the conductor determined
where she should get off.

Heaver street, the conductor told her, was three blocks east. With no
evidence of a slackening of resolution, she proceeded as directed and
was soon searching a long row of cottages, built along almost
identical lines, for number 632.

Reaching this number, she ascended a flight of seven or eight steps
and gave a quick turn to the old-fashioned fifteen-or-twenty-cent
trip-action door bell. A pale-faced, care-worn woman of about 30
years, who might have been mistaken for 40, answered the ring. At
sight of the caller she exclaimed in a voice that echoed years of toil
and suffering:

"Helen!"

"Nell," was the greeting returned by the caller.

The woman stepped aside, and Helen stepped into a hall, whose sole
furnishing consisted of a rag rug on the floor and a cheap hall-tree
with a cracked mirror. Evidently it was the chief wardrobe of the
house, for upon the twenty or more nails driven into the walls in
fairly regular order were articles of both men's and women's wear,
most of them bearing evidence of contact with hard labor. From the
hall, Helen was conducted into the "front room," the only name it was
ever known by, which communicated with the dining room through a cased
opening without portieres. These two rooms were about as barely
furnished as possible under a minimum of necessary articles and
quality. A threadbare ingrain carpet covered the floor of the front
room. A few rag rugs hid probably some of the worst gaps in the
matching of the yellow-pine floor of the dining room.

As for human life in this house of pinch and poverty, it was hardly
vigorous enough to attract attention ahead of the furnishings.
Clinging to the faded skirts of their mother we