used to emerge from the cleansing ministrations of that temple of tidiness, he felt that now, indeed, he was living in luxury and that the grime of the foundry was a trivial thing. Harry, his wife and their three children, had watched the hewing of the joists and admired the mortising. They thought few carpenters could have turned such beautiful round pillars, or so dexterously beaded the piazza railing; and the sunburst carved over the north gable assured Mrs. Leroy that their dwelling was not merely a house but a mansion.

"I do wish Jay would come and see it,' she would say twenty times a month. She never added, “ Now, maybe, he'll be willing to stay with us!" She never distinctly said it to herself; that were to reflect on Jay's affection; Jay, who was so amiable to the children and often brought her a pretty trifle from Chicago and always praised the cooking, although he lived in a hotel in Chicago, where they had ice-cream every day for dinner. Yet the unavowed perception of his discomfort over their humble conditions moved beneath the current of her thoughts like an undertow. It sailed openly through Harry's thoughts. But he never showed it to his wife, not even when Jay borrowed money of him for his hotel bill. He lent the money silently, only telling himself that it were cheaper for him did Jay come to his own house. "Oh, well, I must put up with his foolishness, Effie's so fond of him," he said, tolerantly. Jay was Effie's only brother, younger than she; and she had stinted herself, all her youth, to earn him the education that she felt his abilities deserved. He was a young Chicago lawyer and politician now, whose fluent speech and fine clothes filled his sister with a pride that she tried to believe satisfied all her hopes. He bowed to people in Fairport that she only knew by name, and talked familiarly of all the great ones in her little world. And once, at a political meeting, she saw him on the platform among the vice-presidents, in his black frock coat and white tie, stroking his mustache and smiling, quite at home. It was a glorious moment. Possibly Harry was not so happy; but he loved his wife, and he had been a good friend to Jay.

Being so good a friend-a friend in need, one may say he did not like the looks of his brother-in-law's hand on a special deVOL. XXII.-31

"I hope

livery envelope. He frowned. Jay ain't in a scrape again!" he muttered, with an uneasy quaking of his pulses. Then he unfolded the sheet and read; and the color drifted out of his bronzed face, for this is what he read:

HARRY: I guess you will think I am a scoundrel; but I was dead frozen sure that I had a sure

tip on a wheat deal, and if I'd won out we would all have been rich, for I meant to do the generous thing by Effie. But I was fooled. I had to put up margins you know, and I had raised all I could, and they wouldn't take my note without your endorsement. Now a man that used to be

a friend of mine, but has quarrelled with me on politics, is out gunning for me, and has got that note, and it is likely he will send it to your town for collection, as it is due to-day. I believe the d scoundrel suspects. Harry, it's the penitentiary, no less. Harry, if you let me be arrested, I swear I will blow my brains out. But if you will save me this once I will never forget it as long as I live! And I will pay you up certain

too.

sure, and pay the other money you have lent me, Every cent! There's another thing. I know R- well. I've filled him up with your great influence with the workingmen. Both States are so confoundedly close this year that the managers are opening their hearts. They are willing to plank down $2,000 for your campaign expenses (between ourselves they won't be anything to speak of) if you will do your best for us, on both sides the river. Now, Harry, the note is only $1,342; so if you accept you will have the money to meet it, in hand. And it's sure; they will pay half in advance, and half in November. Don't leave me in the hole, old man, for God's sake! It would break Effie's heart. Burn this.

J

Leroy sat perfectly still for a few minutes. His face continued to grow paler. Suddenly the tide turned in his heart. He clinched his fists and crumpled the letter in them, while the blood began to color his cheeks and forehead until they were a dull, painful red.

His first distinct thought came as a bicycle glided athwart his vision and the child on it touched his little cap to him. He thought, "I can't get Tommy his bike

or me one, either." He laughed an American always laughs when he gets a sudden blow. "The $600 in the bank will have to go.

And-I guess I'll have to put

a mortgage on the house. I thought it so awful fine when I got the other paid off. Well, it will be more natural with one on. Oh, Lord!"

His patient face contracted. "If this was the first time," he muttered, " or if I could be sure it would be the last!

Drearily his memory took up the squalid roll of Jay's "troubles." Jay had been grateful after each escape; and came the more easily at the next peril.

It was somehow wretchedly nagging to remember Jay well dressed, jocose, lightly pushing his misdemeanors behind him. "He to say I ought to get Effie a wheel like his "somehow Harry harped on this one string of his grievances-" when I got her a good wheel, a pretty wheel that was ten dollars more than she thought I was going to pay! D his airs!"

Hullo, Harry!" a man called to him. The man carried a tin dinner-pail and a carpenter's kit. You going to the meeting to-night? Big meeting. Darcy's going to talk."

"Politics, I suppose," said Harry. "Yes, he'll skin the Shylocks alive. Better come. Darcy was wonderful the

last time I heard him."

Then Harry felt the same rush of blood at his heart which he had felt before; but, this time, he did not repel the thought instinctively; he said: All right, I don't mind hearing what you fellows have to say."

66

"That's right," said the other, evidently pleased. You can answer if you want to, you know."

He walked off, humming a tune. Darcy was a smart fellow; Harry was not so sure as he would like to be. that he was honest. He did not agree with him on the question that was in everybody's mind; he himself had been studying it for months in the laborious, thorough-going workingman's fashion. He had talked it over with, his comrades at the shops; with 'Race Battles, the grocer, who had given him a very fair abstract of Mr. Harcourt T. Wells's economical reasoning; with Cochrane, and with Alderman McGinnis ; slowly, his opinions had hardened. But he had held his tongue. Now, suppose Jay and his friends were right. A great many people believed that they were right; and that the triumph of their party would make poor people rich. Just suppose they were; he could easily--he hadn't committed himself to any party-well, where was the harm in hearing Darcy?

He shook his head and went upstairs to his bath and his Saturday-night toilet. His wife fancied that he was rather absent

minded at supper ; but he was gentle as always.

After supper (and during the meal he couldn't help speculating whether they needed to have both eggs and meat at the same time; and how ever he should explain the need of minute frugalities to Effie without lying) he went down town. He thought of riding; but withdrew his foot from the step of the car. "I'm getting extravagant," said he. The same reflection made him replace his tobacco-bag in his pocket.

The hall was a bare room, up two flights of stairs. It was already filled with men, most of whom came in their working clothes. There were so many dark flannel shirts that the room wore a dismal air in spite of the raw white walls and the flaring gas-jets. Most of the men were smoking, and an odor of stale beer, from the saloon below, mingled with the tobaccosmoke. A shout greeted Leroy's appear

ance.

He had never been there before.

"I only came to see what you fellows would make out of it!" said he, brushing the jubilant congratulations and welcomes aside. "Oh, they all say that," he heard. "Just listen to Darcy!" "I'll listen," said Leroy," but I've been reading and thinking a good while, and I am more than half of the opinion

"Yes? Yes?" cried two or three at once.

"I'm more than half of the opinion that you fellows haven't a leg to stand on!"

"Aw, come off," cried the most eager man, yet not angrily; it was plain that Leroy was a great favorite.

"I've knowed Harry to be right six times," said another man, "and I ain't knowed him to be wrong once."

"Well, that's a record."

"Jest let him listen to Darcy!” cried the first speaker; "Darcy is the boy!"

Leroy sat as if he did not hear; but it was quickly passing through his consciousness, like a vibration to that first thrill of gratified vanity, that there were other men with whom his words would have equal weight. Suppose what the one party were continually declaring should be true, and the defeat of their cause meant cruel hard times for workingmen, as well as paralysis of the industries of the country, and na

tional dishonor, what would those who had followed him over the precipice have the right to say to him? He listened without interest to the early speakers, men who had not yet learned to marshal their ideas in connected and effective speech. One of them was a man in his own shop, a good worker, but slow and unready; he never would get any higher wages than he got now; he was growing old; he had a great family and a sickly wife. "I don't know what's the matter, boys," he mumbled, for he had not many teeth, "I know I've worked hard for forty-two years, ever since I was a boy of ten, and it does look like things is gittin' harder every year." "Wages aren't. They're higher! called Leroy.

"And things to eat is cheaper!" called the man who had known Harry to be right six times. He had a loud, cheerful voice, and a cheerful young face with many freckles.

"I ain't denying it; but times is harder," reiterated the speaker, turning his dim and anxious eyes on Leroy. "I tell you, gentlemen, we're ground under by the money power, that's what's the trouble. I got ten children myself

That ain't the fault of the money power," observed the irrepressible cheerful

man.

And I had to borry fifteen dollars last May, and I had to give a morgige on my wife's sewing-machine, and I've been paying ten per cent. a month on that, one hundred and twenty per cent. a year. What do you think of that? I ain't got it all paid yit. I tell you, boys, I'm willing to vote any way to stop them kind of things."

He sat down amid applause and cries, "It's a shame!" "That's right!""Down with Shylock!" Two or three of the light-minded, however, were calling sonorously on " Dick!" "Dick Williams!" "Dicky boy!" The cheerful man (he was Dick Williams) was whispering eagerly in Leroy's ear.

"Wait for Darcy," said Leroy. But But while the next man rambled through the "crimes" of the opposite party, by the aid of notes, which he could not always read-in these intervals of embarrassing study being encouraged by Dick, with a shout of "Louder ! louder!"-Leroy set his teeth and thought. He was thinking

what hard times mean to laboring men. He did not need to imagine, he had only to remember. The drops were pricking his brow. He was roused by frantic cheers. Darcy had risen.

Quietly he stood, his hand in the breast of his coat, waiting for the applause to subside. He was slim, pale, with wavy black hair and melancholy black eyes. He wore a slender black mustache, his face otherwise being clean shaven. He was neatly, almost foppisnly dressed, and his hands, in particular, were most carefully kept. They were very white. As he talked he moved easily about, and his gestures, even in his most impassioned moments, never became grotesque or violent. "Darcy never tries to scoop up the planks of the floor!" Dick Williams expressed it. His chief oratorical charm, however, was his voice, a beautiful, magnetic organ that could deepen without growing harsh, and ring without flattening on its highest notes. His tones floated, sweet, full, and thrilling into the silent listener's ears. He began very quietly. He gave the ordinary arguments of his political creed, but with a deft and fanciful turning of his own. Then he sympathized with the old man who had spoken, describing his honesty and industry so warmly that he was between grins and sobs; from him Darcy fell upon an undefined and rather hazy money power with such vehemence and glowing metaphors that the hearers yelled and shrieked their delight. But honest Dick, after a sharp poring over his hero's face, observed, dryly, "Big talk; but say, where do we come in ?"

What he heard

Harry shook his head. His heart sank within him like a waterlogged boat. He had come to be convinced, to hear logic, facts, what he himself called "the horse sense of the situation." was a hash of exaggeration and falsehood, gilded platitudes, hysterical wrenchings at the emotions, and frantic appeals to the immemorial and wolfish prejudices of class against class. against class. But how magnificently the orator acted his sorry part! Convincing himself with his own molten passion! Swaying himself and his audience in the same breath!

"I call upon you to rebuke these Shylocks who eat the poor as it were bread! he shouted; "I might so powerfully

cause he was a citizen who had opinions, not because he wanted an office. At this moment he looked worried. "I don't like the looks of the thing; it looks-well, it doesn't look like a legitimate campaign expense. Do we absolutely need Darcy?"

"We do," answered the national man, flicking his cigar-ash, with a patient smile, like one willing to go over the same ground unnumbered times; "to say nothing of his Labor paper, he has a wonderful hold on his audiences, McGinnis says." "McGinnis is the most cheerfully venal politician I know."

"My dear Colonel, who denies it? But he is perfectly honest with his employerafter he has taken his side and his campaign bank account is all right. And he is working like a beaver."

"Maybe," admitted the other, wearily; "he does seem interested. After all, I think it's the decent, honest men that make VOL. XXII.-32

me the sickest-too timid to speak out, too lazy to go to primaries, and too dstingy to give a cent to campaign funds. They seem to think that their whole civic duty is performed if they go to the polls once a year. It is enough to make a man want to emigrate!"

"Or reconcile him to the McGinnises. Hullo! That's his knock-Come in!"

The door softly, one might say insidiously, swung inward, admitting a large man in a fresh white duck suit, to which a florid face and a pink silk shirt gave a pleasing dash of color, further emphasized by glossy black hair and a black mustache. He was as much more aggressive, pictorially, than a blond man in the same clothes as a colored lithograph is more aggressive than a water-color.

He greeted both gentlemen with a certain deference, not common to Michael McGinnis. The local magnate (in spite of