For a few moments John stood looking into the distance
as one who sees a vision, then he said, slowly, “And
the Big Idea will win again, old man, as it has always
won; and the traitors and slackers and yellow dogs
will be saved with the rest, I suppose, just as they
always have been saved from themselves.”
He turned to see his comrade standing at attention.
Gravely Captain Charlie saluted.
* * * *
*
Perhaps Jake Vodell was right in believing that the
friendship of John Ward and Charlie Martin was dangerous
to his cause in Millsburgh.
The Vodells, who with their insidious propaganda,
menace America through her industrial troubles, will
be powerless, indeed, when American employers and
employees can think in terms of industrial comradeship.
TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION
That evening the new manager of the Mill stayed for
supper at the Martin cottage. It was the first
time since he had left the old house next door for
his school in a distant city that he had eaten a meal
with these friends of his boyhood.
Perhaps because their minds were so filled with things
they could not speak, their talk was a little restrained.
Captain Charlie attempted a jest or two; John did
his best, and Mary helped them all she could.
The old workman, save for a kindly word now and then
to make the son of Adam Ward feel at home, was silent.
But when the supper was over and the twilight was
come and they had carried their chairs out on the
lawn where, in their boy and girl days they had romped
away so many twilight hours, the weight of the present
was lifted. While Peter Martin smoked his pipe
and listened, the three made merry over the adventures
of their childhood, until the old house next door,
so deserted and forlorn, must have felt that the days
so long past were come again.
It was rather late when John finally said goodnight.
As he drove homeward he told himself many times that
it had been one of the happiest evenings he had ever
spent. He wondered why.
The big house on the hill, as he approached the iron
gates, seemed strangely grim and forbidding.
The soft darkness of the starlit night invited him
to stay out of doors. Reluctantly, half in mind
to turn back, he drove slowly up the long driveway.
The sight of McIver’s big car waiting decided
him. He did not wish to meet the factory owner
that evening. He would wait a while before going
indoors. Finding a comfortable lawn chair not
far from the front of the house, he filled his pipe.
As he sat there, many things unbidden and apparently
without purpose passed in leisurely succession through
his mind. Bits of boyhood experiences, long forgotten
and called up now, no doubt, by his evening at the
cottage that had once been as much his home as the
old house itself. How inseparable the four children
had been! Fragments of his army life—what
an awakening it had all been for him! The coming
struggle with the followers of Jake Vodell—his
new responsibilities. He had feared that his
comradeship with Charlie might be weakened—well,
that was settled now. He was glad they had had
their talk.
