Life in the IronMills ..........................................................................................................................................1

Rebecca Harding Davis ............................................................................................................................1

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of ironworks? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy,

flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the

window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of

drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the

ironfoundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke

on the dingy boats, on the yellow river, clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the housefront, the two

faded poplars, the faces of the passersby. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pigiron through the

narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an

angel pointing upward from the mantelshelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black.

Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and

From the backwindow I can see a narrow brickyard sloping down to the riverside, strewed with

rainbutts and tubs. The river, dull and tawnycolored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired

of the heavy weight of boats and coal barges. What wonder? When I was a child, I used to fancy a look of

weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negrolike river slavishly bearing its burden day after day.

Something of the same idle notion comes to me today, when from the streetwindow I look on the slow

stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted

faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed

with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness

and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul

and body. What do you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing

to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke, horrible to angels perhaps, to them commonplace

enough. My fancy about the river was an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy

here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight, quaint old gardens, dusky with soft, green

foliage of appletrees, and flushing crimson with roses,air, and fields, and mountains. The future of the

Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole

in the muddy graveyard, and after that, not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.

Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the windowpane, and looking out through the

rain at the dirty backyard and the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float up before me,a story of

this house into which I happened to come today. You may think it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the

day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or pleasure.I know: only the outline of a dull life, that long

since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile,

slimy lives, like those of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water butt.Lost? There is a curious point for

you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be

honest. This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes, and

come right down with me,here, into the thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear

this story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain dumb for centuries: I want to make

it a real thing to you. You, Egoist, or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for your feet on

the hills, do not see it clearly,this terrible question which men here have gone mad and died trying to

answer. I dare not put this secret into words. I told you it was dumb. These men, going by with drunken faces

and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it of Society or of God. Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it.

There is no reply. I will tell you plainly that I have a great hope; and I bring it to you to be tested. It is this:

that this terrible dumb question is its own reply; that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but, from the

very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world has known of the Hope to come. I

dare make my meaning no clearer, but will only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark

as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death; but if your eyes are free as mine are to look deeper,

no perfumetinted dawn will be so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come.

My story is very simple,Only what I remember of the life of one of these men,a furnacetender in one

of Kirby John's rollingmills,Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills? They took the great order for the lower

Virginia railroads there last winter; run usually with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the

halfforgotten story of this Wolfe more than that of myriads of these furnacehands. Perhaps because there is

a secret, underlying sympathy between that story and this day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,or

perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the Wolfes lived. There were the father and

son,both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby John's mills for making railroadiron,and Deborah, their

cousin, a picker in some of the cottonmills. The house was rented then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes

had two of the cellarrooms. The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was

Welsh,had spent half of his life in the Cornish tinmines. You may pick the Welsh emigrants, Cornish

miners, out of the throng passing the windows, any day. They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not so

brawny; they stoop more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like

beaten hounds. A pure, unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular bodies and sharplycut

facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the Wolfes lived here. Their lives were like those of their class:

incessant labor, sleeping in kennellike rooms, eating rank pork and molasses, drinkingGod and the

distillers only know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of

their lives?of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the streets today?nothing

beneath?all? So many a political reformer will tell you,and many a private reformer, too, who has gone

among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged, hardened.

One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of halfclothed women stopped outside of the cellardoor.

"Goodnight, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the gaspost. She needed the post to steady

"Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun," said a shrill Welsh voice in the crowd.

Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman, who was groping for the latch of

"Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud. An wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's

ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the powers, an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,the

They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag the woman Wolfe off with them;

Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a

tallow dip, that sent a yellow glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,the earthen floor covered with a

green, slimy moss,a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a

torn horseblanket. He was a pale, meek little man, with a white face and red rabbiteyes. The woman

Deborah was like him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a

faded cotton gown and a slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was deformed, almost a

hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him, and went through into the room beyond. There she found

by the halfextinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes, which she put upon a broken

chair with a pintcup of ale. Placing the old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she untied her bonnet,

which hung limp and wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper. It was the first food that had touched

her lips since morning. There was enough of it, however: there is not always. She was hungry,one could

see that easily enough,and not drunk, as most of her companions would have been found at this hour. She

did not drink, this woman,her face told that, too,nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the weak, flaccid

wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up,some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need.

When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone. While she was

"Janey!" she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness. "Janey, are you there?"

A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young,girl emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.

The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with sleep and hunger: real Milesian eyes they

were, dark, delicate blue, glooming out from black shadows with a pitiful fright.

"Where's the father?" asked Deborah, holding out a potato, which the girl greedily seized.

"He's beyant,wid Haley,in the stone house." (Did you ever hear the word tail from an Irish mouth?) "I

"I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch lasts till the mornin'."

The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch in a tin pail, and to pour her own

"Lay ye down, Janey dear," she said, gently, covering her with the old rags. "Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's

She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily,

as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that

stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of

muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lagerbier shop, were closed; now

Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast machinery of system by which the

bodies of workmen are governed, that goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are

divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army. By night and day the

work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only for a day

in the week, in halfcourtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes

midnight, the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh, breathless vigor, the

As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these thousand engines sounded through the

sleep and shadow of the city like faroff thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a mile

below the citylimits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from standing twelve hours at the spools. Yet it

was her almost nightly walk to take this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to rest, and she

Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity of the scene might have made her step

stagger less, and the path seem shorter; but to her the mills were only "summat deilish to look at by night."

The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock, which rose abrupt and bare on one side

of the cinder covered road, while the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for rolling

iron are simply immense tent like roofs, covering acres of ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs

Deborah looked in on a city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every horrible form: pits

of flame waving in the wind; liquid metalflames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide

caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through

all, crowds of half clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of

glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as she crept through, "looks like t' Devil's

She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a furnace. He had not time to eat his supper;

so she went behind the furnace, and waited. Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her only by a

Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her teeth chattered with cold, with the rain

that soaked her clothes and dripped from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding the pail, and

"Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat. Come near to the fire,"said one of the men, approaching to

She shook her head. Wolfe had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man, and came closer.

She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick instinct, she saw that he was not

hungry,was eating to please her. Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.

"No, good enough." He hesitated a moment. "Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide here till I go. Lay down there on

He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and

was not a hard bed; the halfsmothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and cold shiver.

Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,yet not an unfitting figure to

crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of

things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and

hunger,even more fit to be a type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth

reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a soul filled with groping passionate

love, heroic unselfishness, fierce jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom she

loved, to gain one look of real heart kindness from him? If anything like this were hidden beneath the pale,

bleared eyes, and dull, washedoutlooking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its faint signs: not

the halfclothed furnacetender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet he was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even

to the very rats that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew that. And it might be

that very knowledge had given to her face its apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that

dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's faces,in the very midst, it may be, of

their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath

the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the

stupor and vacancy had time to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one guessed it;

She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to

the dull plash of the rain in the far distance, shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look

towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form which made him

loathe the sight of her. She felt by instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the man,

which made him among his fellowworkmen something unique, set apart. She knew, that, down under all the

vileness and coarseness of his life, there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure, that his

soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his words were kindest. Through this dull

consciousness, which never left her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and lithe figure

of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a

vivid glow of beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as her only friend: that was

the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it?

Are pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house

or your own heart,your heart, which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave

If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the hearts of these men the terrible

tragedy of their lives, taking it as a symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify you

more. A reality of soul starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the besotted faces on the

street,I can paint nothing of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life of one

man: whatever muddy depth of soulhistory lies beneath you can read according to the eyes God has given

Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the furnace with his iron pole,

unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping to receive orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but

little. He had already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his

face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of the girl

men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet. He was never seen in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but

seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The

man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of

schoollearning on him,not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the freeschool in fact, but

For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they felt that, though outwardly as filthy

and ash covered; silent, with foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in

innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring furnacebuildings lay great heaps of the

refuse from the ore after the pigmetal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate,

waxen, fleshcolored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his offhours from the furnace, had a

habit of chipping and moulding figures,hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely beautiful: even

the millmen saw that, while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few

hours for rest he spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch came

again,working at one figure for months, and, when it was finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of

disappointment. A morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness and crime, and

I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there among the lowest of his kind, and see him

just as he is, that you may judge him justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back, as

he does every day, at his birth in vice, his starved infancy; to remember the heavy years he has groped

through as boy and man,the slow, heavy years of constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he thinks

sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it will ever end. Think that God put into this

man's soul a fierce thirst for beauty,to know it, to create it; to besomething, he knows not what,other

than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a

child's face, will rouse him to a passion of pain,when his nature starts up with a mad cry of rage against

God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile, slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a

great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man was by habit only a coarse,

vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and words you would blush to name. Be just: when I tell you about this

night, see him as he is. Be just,not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact, but like God's judging

angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless nights,

when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him, before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.

I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him unawares. These great turningdays of life

cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to

Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron with his pole, dully thinking only

how many rails the lump would yield. It was late,nearly Sunday morning; another hour, and the heavy

work would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day. The workmen were growing

more noisy, shouting, as they had to do, to be heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew

less boisterous,at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had happened. After a moment, the silence

came nearer; the men stopped their jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head, saw the

cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as

they came. Visitors often came to see the mills after night: except by growing less noisy, the men took no

notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and

tired: a walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out of sight, turned

over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor, and watched them

keenly. He knew some of them: the overseer, Clarke,a son of Kirby, one of the millowners,and a

Doctor May, one of the townphysicians. The other two were strangers. Wolfe came closer. He seized

eagerly every chance that brought him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down on him

perpetually with the glamour of another order of being. What made the difference between them? That was

the mystery of his life. He had a vague notion that perhaps tonight he could find it out. One of the strangers

"This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?"lighting his cigar. "But the walk is worth the trouble. If it

were not that you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works look like Dante's

"Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb," pointing to some figure in the shimmering

"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other, "they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's

Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands for the first time.

The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just then,giving, in fact, a schedule of the

annual business of the firm to a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on the

crown of his hat: a reporter for one of the citypapers, getting up a series of reviews of the leading

manufactories. The other gentlemen had accompanied them merely for amusement. They were silent until the

notes were finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering their faces from the intolerable heat. At

"Here, some of you men!" said Kirby, "bring up those boards. We may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the

hundred,bitumen,um!all right, I believe, Mr. Clarke;sinkingfund,what did you say was your

"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who had first spoken. "Do you control their votes,

"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my father brought seven hundred votes to the

polls for his candidate last November. No forcework, you understand,only a speech or two, a hint to form

themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The Invincible Roughs,I

There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying

critically the halfclothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He was a

stranger in the city,spending a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of

the South,a brotherinlaw of Kirby's, Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,hence his anatomical

eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prizering; a man who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy

in an indifferent, gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were worth in his own

scales; accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven, earth, or hell, but oneidead men; with a temper yielding

and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are

As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick pleasure the contour of the white hand,

the bloodglow of a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,low,

even, with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging to the

thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe, scraping away the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it

The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the others, comfortably seated near the furnace,

lingered, smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more unintelligible to the

furnacetenders, whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and

read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like

a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at

Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his

Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that

The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the

tolling bells floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen

Saviour was a keynote to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,even this social riddle which

The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the

hands who fed the fires, and those who had no lodgings and slept usually on the ashheaps. The three

strangers sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the furnaces, laughing now and then at some

"Do you know," said Mitchell, "I like this view of the works better than when the glare was fiercest? These

heavy shadows and the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red

smouldering lights to be the halfshut eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in the den."

Kirby laughed. "You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The spectral figures, as you call them, are a

little too real for me to fancy a close proximity in the darkness, unarmed, too."

"Raining, still," said Doctor May, "and hard. Where did we leave the coach, Mitchell?"

Mitchell started back, halffrightened, as, suddenly turning a corner, the white figure of a woman faced him

in the darkness, a woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in some

"Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a fleshtint the stuff has! Do you see, Mitchell?"

He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking at it in silence. There was not one line

of beauty or grace in it: a nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs instinct

with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the

wild, eager face, like that of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it, critical, curious.

"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn that sweep of the muscles in the arm and

hand? Look at them! They are groping,do you see?clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of thirst."

"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered Kirby, glancing at the halfnaked figures.

"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the strained sinews of the instep! A

"Why?" demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the figure? I cannot catch the meaning."

"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"pointing to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men,

The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind hearted men put on, when talking to these

"Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,I'm sure I don't know why. But what did you

"Ohh! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given no sign of starvation to the body.

It is strong, terribly strong. It has the mad, halfdespairing gesture of drowning."

Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of the thing, he knew. But the cool,

"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat to make her live, I think,like you. Whiskey

The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust somewhere,not at Wolfe.

"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that woman's face! It asks questions of God, and

"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them? Keep them at puddling iron?"

"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses. I suppose there are some stray gleams

of mind and soul among these wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out their

own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder which any man can scale. Do you doubt

it? Or perhaps you want to banish all social ladders, and put us all on a flat tableland,eh, May?"

The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this woman's face, and troubled these

men. Kirby waited for an answer, and, receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.

"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or 'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of

men, these men who do the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,nothing more,hands. It

would be kindness. God help them! What are taste, reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He

pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the ashheap. "So many nerves to sting them to pain. What if God had put

your brain, with all its agony of touch, into your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"

"That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive deep enough to find bottom, eh?"

"Exactly," rejoined Kirby. "I do not think. I wash my hands of all social problems,slavery, caste, white or

black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit,the payhour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if

they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible."

"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who pays them money to do with their souls'

Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of the rough image looking into their

faces with the awful question, "What shall we do to be saved?" Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight of

brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which looked the soul of his class, only Wolfe's

"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the air of an amused spectator at a play.

Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the

furnacetender as he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study

"Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to quote in English, 'Hungry and

thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very

clear the answer, too!I think I remember reading the same words somewhere: washing your hands in Eau

de Cologne, and saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'"

"Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye

did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of the

Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its voice, what has the heart to say? You are a

philanthropist, in a small Way,n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut korl

"I think a mocking devil possesses you tonight," rejoined the Doctor, seriously.

He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain

that much good was to be done here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life by a

"Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man?do you understand?" (talking down

to the capacity of his hearer: it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)"to live a better,

stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself anything he chooses. God has given you

May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was magnanimous. The puddler had drunk

in every word, looking through the Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self approval, into his will, with

"You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in my heart to take this boy and educate

"Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?I have not the money, boy," to Wolfe, shortly.

"Money?" He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed answer to a riddle, doubtfully. "That is it?

"Yes, money,that is it," said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his furred coat about him. "You've found the

cure for all the world's diseases.Come, May, find your goodhumor, and come home. This damp wind

chills my very bones. Come and preach your SaintSimonian doctrines' tomorrow to Kirby's hands. Let

them have a clear idea of the rights of the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher wages. That

"Will you send the coachdriver to this side of the mills?" asked Kirby, turning to Wolfe.

He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler go, crept after him. The three men

"Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world speak without meaning to these people.

Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head indolently, and looked into the mills. There

hung about the place a thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he perceived it, and

his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.

"Besides," added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "it would be of no use. I am not one of them."

"Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people's has worked down,

for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through history, and

you will know it. What will this lowest deepthieves, Magdalens, negroesdo with the light filtered

through ponderous Church creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter need

will be thrown up their own lightbringer,their Jean Paul, their Cromwell, their Messiah."

"Bah!" was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he adopted the theory; for, when, night and

morning, afterwards, he prayed that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at heart,

Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach drove off. The Doctor had held out

his hand in a frank, generous way, telling him to "take care of himself, and to remember it was his right to

rise." Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby

had thrown Deborah some money, which she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all

He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight against the wall. Do you remember

rare moments when a sudden light flashed over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a

mountainpeak, seeing your life as it might have been, as it is? one quick instant, when custom lost its force

and everyday usage? when your friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light? your soul was bared, and the

grave,a foretaste of the nakedness of the JudgmentDay? So it came before him, his life, that night. The

slow tides of pain he had borne gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily life, the

brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching

into his consciousness; tonight, they were reality. He griped the filthy red shirt that clung, stiff with soot,

about him, and tore it savagely from his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,and the

Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him,the pure face, the delicate, sinewy

limbs, in harmony with all he knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something like

this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain: a Man all knowing, allseeing,

crowned by Nature, reigning,the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men. And yet his

instinct taught him that he tooHe! He looked at himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a

cry, and then was silent. With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe had not been vague in his

ambitions. They were practical, slowly built up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do.

Through years he had day by day made this hope a real thing to himself,a clear, projected figure of

Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women working at his side up with him:

sometimes he forgot this defined hope in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape, out of the wet, the

pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,only for one moment of free air on a hillside, to lie down and let

his sick soul throb itself out in the sunshine. But tonight he panted for life. The savage strength of his nature

"Look at me!" he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his puny chest savagely. "What am I

He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was

He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy street, side by side.

"It's all wrong," he muttered, slowly,"all wrong! I dunnot understan'. But it'll end some day."

"Come home, Hugh!" she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking around bewildered.

"Home,and back to the mill!" He went on saying this over to himself, as if he would mutter down every

She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold. They reached the cellar at last. Old

Wolfe had been drinking since she went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily in the

corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung

him, as he stood there. He wiped the drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,

trembling. A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then out of the poor puddler's life, as he

looked at the sleeping, innocent girl,some plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave it up

that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his face grew a shade paler, that was all. But,

somehow, the man's soul, as God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.

Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which she placed on the floor, closing the

door after her. She had seen the look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she came

up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet, holding his face in his hands.

"Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,him with the clear voice? Did hur hear? Money, money,that it

The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls, and the woman standing there. He

looked at her. She was young, in deadly earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their

"Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He said it true! It is money!"

"Hear till me only tonight! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur

"If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors tonight, and gif hur money, to go out,OUT, I

say,out, lad, where t' sun shines, and t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays all

t' time,where t'man lives that talked to us tonight, Hugh knows,Hugh could walk there like a king!"

He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in her eager haste.

"If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur take me out o' this place wid hur and

Janey? I wud not come into the gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,only at night, when t'

"It is here," she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. "I took it! I did it! Me, me!not hur! I shall

be hanged, I shall be burnt in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he leaned against t'

She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather chips together to make a fire, choking

That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a small green pocketbook containing

one or two gold pieces, and a check for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it

He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and weariness. She brought some

It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when I say he had then no thought of

keeping this money. Deborah had hid it in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took

"Hur knows," she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. "But it is hur right to keep it."

His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed himself, and went out to find this

man Mitchell. His right! Why did this chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils

The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of an alley leading into one of the larger

streets. His brain was clear tonight, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly, from any

hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no

sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for victory.

He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word sickened him; then he grappled with it.

Sitting there on a broken cartwheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the churchbells' tolling passed before

him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on within. This money! He took it out, and looked at it. If

People going by to church saw only a sickly millboy watching them quietly at the alley's mouth. They did

not know that he was mad, or they would not have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his

hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live the life God meant him to live. His soul

within him was smothering to death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and knewnothing. There was

nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there. Of God and heaven he had heard so little,

that they were to him what fairy land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off. His brain,

greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers, questioned these men and women going by,

coldly, bitterly, that night. Was it not his right to live as they,a pure life, a good, truehearted life, full of

beauty and kind words? He only wanted to know how to use the strength within him. His heart warmed, as he

Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night crept on, as this one image slowly

evolved itself from the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be! What

wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,the madness that underlies all revolution, all progress, and all fall?

You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying its argument so clearly,that to him a

true life was one of full development rather than selfrestraint? that he was deaf to the higher tone in a cry of

voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the fullest flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause.

I only want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly to take it out.

The money,there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper, nothing in itself; used to raise him out of

the pit, something straight from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the question at

last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his forehead. God made this moneythe fresh air,

toofor his children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The Something who looked

down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had a kindly face, he knew,loved his children alike.

There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple flames, or the clear depth of amber

in the water below the bridge, had somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,of an infinite

depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,somewhere, a depth of quiet and rest and love. Looking up now, it

became strangely real. The sun had sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching the

zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the

suntouched smokeclouds opened like a cleft ocean,shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of

billowy silver veined with blood scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light. Wolfe's artisteye

grew drunk with color. The gates of that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world

of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine, of millowners and mill hands?

A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,he thought, stretching out his

hands,free to work, to live, to love! Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his

nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation, lapped it in fancied

rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and endless as the cloudseas of color. Clutching it, as if

the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was

his watch at the mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!shaking off the thought with

Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the man wandered from one to another of his old

haunts, with a half consciousness of bidding them farewell,lanes and alleys and backyards where the

millhands lodged,noting, with a new eagerness, the filth and drunkenness, the pigpens, the ash heaps

covered with potatoskins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new disgust, a new sense of

sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still

there? It left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his life, he entered a church. It was a

sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light lost itself in farretreating arches; built to meet the requirements

and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances,

the shadows, the still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the mysterious music, thrilled,

lifted his soul with a wonderful pain. Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean

terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened the charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong.

An old man, who had lived much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart was

summerwarm with charity. He taught it tonight. He held up Humanity in its grand total; showed the great

worldcancer to his people. Who could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had studied the age

thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, worldwide, over all time. His faith stood sublime upon the

Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all nations. How

did he preach it tonight? In burning, lightladen words he painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the

universal Man: words that became reality in the lives of these people,that lived again in beautiful words

and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defined it, was a real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his.

His words passed far over the furnacetender's grasp, toned to suit another class of culture; they sounded in

his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown tongue. He meant to cure this worldcancer with a steady eye

that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor strychninewhiskey had taught to

Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this,

and did not fail. His disciple, showing Him tonight to cultured hearers, showing the clearness of the

Godpower acting through Him, shrank back from one coarse fact; that in birth and habit the man Christ was

thrown up from the lowest of the people: his flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them, to

brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the actual slime and want of their hourly life, and the winepress he trod

Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son of the carpenter had stood in the church

that night, as he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before His Father and their Father,

despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His head, wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their

transgressions, would not that hungry millboy at least, in the back seat, have "known the man"? That Jesus

Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He looked up; the night had come on foggy,

damp; the golden mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull and ashcolored. He wandered again aimlessly

down the street, idly wondering what had become of the cloudsea of crimson and scarlet. The trial day of

this man's life was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting circumstance,a

quicker walking over the path,that was all. Do you want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a

tragic story out of it? Why, in the policereports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies:

hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas; hints that here a power was lost to

heaven,that there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the hints

Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth

column of the morningpaper: an unusual thing,these policereports not being, in general, choice reading

"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at Kirby's mill?that was arrested for

robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just listen:'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby John's

Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! Serves

him right! After all our kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"

His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people, and then they began to talk of something

Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half

Hugh Wolfe sat on the windowledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles Were ironed. Not usual in such

cases; but he had made two desperate efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the jailer, said, "small blame to

him! Nineteen years' inprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look forward to." Haley was very

"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in telling the story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut

down at once,laid there on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw a man so

cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever had. Would

choose no lawyer. Judge gave him one, of course. Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but it

wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'T was a hard sentence,all the law allows;

but it was for 'xample's sake. These millhands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he just

looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the world had gone wrong. That night, after the

trial, a gentleman came to see him here, name of Mitchell,him as he stole from. Talked to him for an hour.

Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into

his cell. Found him very low; bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was as weak

as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get apast me and get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw

him on the pallet. Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord help you! he fought like

a tiger,giv' some terrible blows. Fightin' for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib

down yonder. Got a deathcough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down that day; so I just put the irons on

his feet. There he sits, in there. Goin' tomorrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried

with him,you remember?she's only got three years. 'Complice. But she's a woman, you know. He's been

quiet ever since I put on irons: giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sicklookin'. It acts different on 'em, bein'

sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilishlike. Some prays awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills,

all in a breath. That woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him, for three days.

I'm agoin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here she is in this next cell. I'm agoin' now to let her in."

He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the cell, and stood watching him. He was

scratching the iron bars of the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle, uncertain,

"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will need a crowbar beside your tin, before you

The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah did not speak. At last she ventured

He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,such a bright, boyish smile, that it Went to poor

"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think I brought hur to it! And I loved hur

The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through the sharp cry.

He did not seem to hear her,scraping away diligently at the bars with the bit of tin.

Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw there made her draw suddenly

back,something which Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since

the trial, or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,yes, she knew what that meant.

She had often seen it creeping over women's faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or

consumption. That meant death, distant, lingering: but thisWhatever it was the woman saw, or thought she

saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of

"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,"oh, boy, not that! for God's sake, not that!"

The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered word or two that drove her away. Yet

the words were kindly enough. Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of tears, but did

not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress

It was marketday. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in

a long line, where they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed

hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and swearing at

the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more than anything else had done, wakened him up,made the whole real to

him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin fall, and looked out, pressing his face

close to the rusty bars. How they crowded and pushed! And he,he should never walk that pavement again!

There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was

married the other week. He whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff

remembered he was there, if any of the boys thought of him up there, and thought that he never was to go

down that old cinderroad again. Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not for

How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how like a picture it was, the darkgreen

heaps of corn, and the crimson beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light

flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers! He could see the

red shining of the drops, it was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step. So easy, as it

seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never benot in all the thousands of years to comethat he should

put his foot on that street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some one else. There was

a dog down in the market, walking after his master with such a stately, grave look!only a dog, yet he could

go backwards and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest cur, yelping there in

the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while

heNo, he would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen to a dispute between a

countryman and a woman about some meat; but it would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?

Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew what it was to be in the

penitentiary, how it went with men there. He knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until

soul and body had become corrupt and rotten,how, when he came out, if he lived to come, even the lowest

of the millhands would jeer him,how his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He

believed he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled, weary look. It ached, his head,

with thinking. He tried to quiet himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there right or

wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught him? He thrust the whole matter away. A

dark, cold quiet crept through his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more than the

She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her mouth just then was bitterer than death. She

"Hur'll never see Deb again!" she ventured, her lips growing colder and more bloodless.

What did she say that for? Did he not know it? Yet he would not be impatient with poor old Deb. She had

She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing there, with her hunchback, her rags,

He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in his face in an agony of entreaty. He

She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of the door. As she went, she staggered.

"Drinkin' today?" broke out Haley, pushing her before him. "Where the Devil did you get it? Here, in with

Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor, through which she could see the light

from Wolfe's. She had discovered it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,

hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the bars. He was at his old amusement

again. Something in the noise jarred on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the

He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now. A tall mulatto girl, following her

mistress, her basket on her head, crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but, when

she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars, suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A

free, firm step, a clearcut olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes, and on the

head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked

out half shadowed. The picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would try tomorrow,

and cut one like it. Tomorrow! He threw down the tin, trembling, and covered his face with his hands.

Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet,

thinking. Whatever was the mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly, in the

dark there, and became fixed,a something never seen on his face before. The evening was darkening fast.

The market had been over for an hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent: he

listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for the last time. For the same reason, it was, I

suppose, that he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passerby, wondering who they were, what kind

of homes they were going to, if they had children,listening eagerly to every chance word in the street, as

if(God be merciful to the man! what strange fancy was this?)as if he never should hear human voices

It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last passenger, he thought, was gone. No,there

was a quick step: Joe Hill, lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow without some

joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he lived with his wife. "Granny Hill" the boys

called her. Bedridden she Was; but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!and the old woman,

when he was there, was laughing at some of t' lad's foolishness." The step was far down the street; but he

could see him place the ladder, run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once more.

The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of the

window, and called again, louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but it hurt

"Be quiet!" said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it with his club.

There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the bed, taking the bit of tin, which he

had rasped to a tolerable degree of sharpness, in his hand,to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,

looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in the next cell, heard a slight clicking

sound, often repeated. She shut her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat broke over

"Hur knows best," she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards where she lay.

If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten her. He lay quite still, his arms

outstretched, looking at the pearly stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour that

came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before. I think that all the low, vile life, all his

wrongs, all his starved hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him sick unto

death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn face now and then to the pure light, that seemed

The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path, slowly came nearer, and threw the light

across his bed on his feet. He watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to him to

carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there always in the mills! The years had been so

fierce and cruel! There was coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in

a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of

what might be and was not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first he saw a sea

of faces: the millmen,women he had known, drunken and bloated,Janey's timid and pitifulpoor old

Debs: then they floated together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly moonlight.

Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretchedout figure, it brought with It calm and peace, who shall say?

His dumb soul was alone with God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from faroff Calvary,

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Who dare say? Fainter and fainter the heart rose and

fell, slower and slower the moon floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white splendor

swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper stillness the dead figure that never should move

again. Silence deeper than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of blood dripping

There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner and his jury, the local editors, Kirby

himself, and boys with their hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed into

the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She came late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or

Friend, as they call themselves. I think this woman Was known by that name in heaven. A homely body,

coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had let her in) took notice of her. She watched them

allsitting on the end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a watchdog, if any of

them touched the body. There was no meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are

made, instead. All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell,

Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face. Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had

not spoken to her,only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they all were gone, the woman,

in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase of woodleaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then

opened the narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over the dead face,

The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn face. There was a heavy shadow in the

"Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?" said Deborah in a shrill tone, catching her arm.

"In t' townyard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur born in t' lane moor, where t' air is

frick and strong. Take hur out, for God's sake, take hur out where t' air blows!"

The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm around Deborah and led her to the

"Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the light lies warm there, and the winds of God

blow all the day? I live there,where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me," She turned Deborah's

face to her own, clear and earnest, "Thee will believe me? I will take Hugh and bury him there to morrow."

Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against the iron bars, looking at the hills that

rose far off, through the thick sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow of

their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears

gathered in her eyes: the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest, the grave

heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She

"When thee comes back," she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one who speaks from a strong heart deeply

moved with remorse or pity, "thee shall begin thy life again,there on the hills. I came too late; but not for

Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my story here. At eveningtime it was light.

There is no need to tire you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient Christlove,

needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these

hills, whose windows overlook broad, wooded slopes and clovercrimsoned meadows,niched into the very

place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the Friends' meetinghouse. Once a week they sit there,

in their grave, earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their simple hearts to receive His

words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her

gray dress, her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman much loved by these

silent, resfful people; more silent than they, more humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills

higher and purer than these on which she lives,dim and far off now, but to be reached some day. There may

be in her heart some latent hope to meet there the love denied her here,that she shall find him whom she

lost, and that then she will not be all unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of every

soul from one eternity to the other,something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not: a

hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What blame to the

Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this figure of the millwoman cut in korl.

I have it here in a corner of my library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,it is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet

there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,tonight, for

instance,the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the

darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead

korlcutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale, vague lips seem

to tremble with a terrible question. "Is this the End?" they say,"nothing beyond? no more?" Why, you tell

me you have seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes,horses dying under the lash. I know.

The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gaslight wakens from the shadows here and there the

objects which lie scattered through the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As I

glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming day. A halfmoulded child's head;

Aphrodite; a bough of forestleaves; music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal

truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to belong to and end with the night. I turn

to look at it. Has the power of its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet

steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head like a blessing hand, and its groping

arm points through the broken cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set