that she should be ordered to give up
her health and life only that others might wear fine raiment and live
in kings' houses? Surely it was not God who had laid that sentence
upon her.

Corinne Garland and the Heth Works: it was long since these two had
first seized his mind like a watchword. For here was no matter of one
small girl who worked more hours than her strength would bear; no matter
even of one large factory which harnessed the life of three hundred men
and women and drove them over-hard. But was not this the perfect symbol
of that preying of the fortunate upon the unfortunate, of that crushing
inequality of inheritance, which reacted so deadeningly upward and
downward, and more than anything else hobbled the feet of Man? By one
flagrant instance, by Kern at Heth's, all the pitiful wrong-headedness
was made plain. Pinned forever to the accident of economic birth, all
their energies sucked up by the struggle for bread and meat, these poor
were mocked with bitter "equality" which did not equalize, but despoiled
of all chance to extricate themselves from their poverty. And their
terrible revenge was to spread their own stagnation upward. Neither
could the rich extricate themselves from their riches. The sorriest
thing in the picture was that they did not desire to. Behold how blindly
they struggled to cut the brotherly cord that bound them to what was
common and unclean, and that cord their souls' one light....

The still young man looked at the face of his little patient, and his
mind went back to that day when he and O'Neill had visited the Heth
Works, last October, and he had seen Kern at her machine. He had come
back ablaze, and he had then written that Severe Arraignment which Mr.
Heth had threatened to sue the "Post" for publishing, but never had....
And then ... and then he had thought that perhaps nothing so loud and
harsh would be needed. Hopeful months went by. Then trouble had come to
a family, and he had stayed his hand again.... And now, Kern Garland,
who was dear to him, whose right and need he had failed to voice....

"Oh!... _Mr. V.V.!_"

Without warning, the little girl sat up in bed, her cheeks bright, her
eyes wide and shining. Yet it seemed that she had called Mr. V.V.'s name
a little before her eyes fell upon his silent figure.

"Oh, Mr. V.V.!" she repeated in a low eager voice, hardly above a
whisper.... "I been havin' the loveliest dreams!..."

The young man put out a hand and press