oking at her gravely, but his look was less strange
than Wayne's.

"I don't think they'd go that far, Miss Jones. But they do know that
there's a lot of needless misery they could wipe out."

"They're out and out materialists, aren't they? Everything's
economic--the economic basis for everything in creation. They seem very
cocksure that getting that the way they want it would usher in the
millennium. You said the most important thing in life to these men was
higher wages and shorter hours. I don't blame them for wanting them--I
hope they get them--but I don't know that I see it as very promising that
they regard it as the most important thing in life. To do less and get
more is not what you'd call a spiritual aspiration, is it?" she laughed.
"This is what I mean--it's not the end, is it?"

"Socialists wouldn't call it the end. But it's got to be the end until it
can become the means."

"Yes, but if you get in the habit of looking at it as an end, will there
be anything left for it to be a means to?"

"Why yes, those spiritual aspirations you mention."

"Unless by that time the world's such an economic machine it doesn't want
spiritual aspirations."

"Well Heaven help the working man that's got them in the present economic
machine," said Ferguson a little impatiently.

She, too, moved impatiently. "Oh I don't know a thing about it. It's
absurd for me to be talking about it."

"Why I don't think it's at all absurd, only I don't think you see the
thing clear to the end, and I wish you could talk to somebody who sees
farther than I do. I'm new to it myself. Now there's a man doing a lot of
boat repairing up here above the Island. I wish you could talk to him.
He'd know just what you mean, and just how to meet you."

"Oh, would he?" said Katie. "What's his name?"

"Mann. Alan Mann."

"Why, Katie," laughed Wayne, "it must be that he's that same mythical
creature known as the man who mends the boats."

"Yes," said Katie, "I fancy he's the very same mythical creature."

"My little boy talks about him," Wayne explained.

"Yes, he's the same one. I've seen him talking to your little boy and one
of the soldiers. He's a queer genius."

"In what way is he a queer genius?" asked Katie.

"Why--I don't know. He's always got a way of looking at a thing that you
hadn't seen yourself." He looked up with a little smile from the tool he
was trying to adjust. "I'd like to have you tell him you were worrying
about sociali