d him whisper to himself: "Fine boy."

After a while he looked at the woman. She seemed to feel an accusation
in his eyes. She said: "I did all I could."

He asked "What was it?"

I had it in me--though I had reason enough to despise the little man--to
pity Hazen Kinch.

"He coughed," said the woman. "I knew it was croup. You know I asked you
to get the medicine--ipecac. You said no matter--no need--and you had
gone."

She looked out of the window.

"I went for help--to Annie Marshey. Her babies had had it. Her husband
was going to town and she said he would get the medicine for me. She did
not tell him it was for me. He would not have done it for you. He did
not know. So I gave her a dollar to give him--to bring it out to me.

"He came home in the snow last night. Baby was bad by that time, so I
was watching for Doan. I stopped him in the road and I asked for the
medicine. When he understood he told me. He had not brought it."

The woman was speaking dully, without emotion.

"It would have been in time, even then," she said. "But after a while,
after that, baby died."

I understood in that moment the working of the mills. And when I looked
at Hazen Kinch I saw that he, too, was beginning to understand. There
is a just mercilessness in an aroused God. Hazen Kinch was driven to
questions.

"Why--didn't Marshey fetch it?" he asked.

She said slowly: "They would not trust him--at the store."

His mouth twitched, he raised his hands.

"The money!" he cried. "The money! What did he do with that?"

"He said," the woman answered, "that he lost it--in your office; lost
the money there."

After a little the old money-lender leaned far back like a man wrenched
with agony. His body was contorted, his face was terrible. His dry mouth
opened wide.

He screamed!

* * * * *

Halfway up the hill to my house I stopped to look back and all round.
The vast hills in their snowy garments looked down upon the land, upon
the house of Hazen Kinch. Still and silent and inscrutable.

I knew now that a just and brooding God dwelt among these hills.

ON STRIKE

BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

From _The Popular Magazine_

"Furthermore, howadji," ventured Najib, who had not spoken for fully
half an hour, but had been poring over a sheaf of shipment items
scribbled in Arabic, "furthermore, I am yearnful to know who was the
unhappy person the wicked general threatened. Or, of a perhaps,