Then, after all, it was the Rev. Robert Burns who met him at the door and took him through the factory, bent on seeing some parishioner on an errand of love.  And there was that strange sense of the Presence having been there before them, walking about among the machinery, looking at the tired face of one, sorrowing over the wrinkles in another forehead, pitying the weary hands that toiled, blessing the faithful!  It reminded him of the morgue in that.  For a minute he began to think that if the Presence was here in this peculiar sense, then, of course, it was an indication that he was needed here to work for these people, as Uncle Ramsey had tried with strange worldly wisdom to make him understand.  But then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the face of the little minister, white under its freckles, with a righteous wrath as he fixed his gaze sternly on the door at the end of the long room.  He looked up quickly to hear the click of a key in a lock as the foreman passed from one room to another.

He glanced down at the minister and their eyes met.

“They lock them in here like sheep in a pen.  If a fire should break out they would all die!” said the minister under his breath.  His lips were trembling with the helplessness of himself against the power of a great trust.

“You don’t say!” said Courtland, startled.  It was his first view of conditions of this sort.  He looked about with eyes alive to things he had not seen before.  “But I thought this was a model factory!  Isn’t it absolutely fire-proof?”

“Somewhat so, on the outside!” shrugged Burns.  “It’s a whited sepulcher, that’s what it is.  Beautiful marble and vines, beautiful rest-room and library—­for the visitors to rest and read in—­beautiful restaurant where the girls must buy their meals at the company’s prices or go without; beautiful outside everywhere; but it’s rotten, absolutely rotten all through!  Look at the width of that staircase!  That’s the one the employees use.  The visitors only see the broad way by which you came up.  Look at those machines!  All painted and gilded!  They are old models and twice as heavy to work as the new ones, but we can’t get them to make changes.  Look at those seats, put there to impress the visitors!  The fact is not one of the hands dare use them, except a minute now and then when the foreman happens to leave the room!  They know they will get docked in their pay if they are caught sitting down at their work!  And yet it is always flaunted before the visitors that the workmen can sit down when they like.  So they can, but they can go home without a pay-envelope if they do, when Saturday night comes.  Oh, there is enough here to make one’s blood boil!  You’re interested in these things?  I wish you’d let me tell you more some time.  About the long hours, the stifling air in some rooms, and the little children working in spite of the law!  I wish men like you would come down here and help clean this section out and make conditions different!  Why don’t you come and help me?”