you say that!" she answered quietly. "I like him,
too--he seems so kind, so understanding."

"Do you know him?"

"Well,--" she hesitated--"I feel as though I do. I've only met him once,
and that was by accident. It was the day the big strike began, last
spring, and I had been shopping, and started for the mills to get father
to walk home with me, as I used to do. I saw the crowds blocking the
streets around the canal. At first I paid no attention to them, but
after a while I began to be a little uneasy, there were places where I
had to squeeze through, and I couldn't help seeing that something was
wrong, and that the people were angry. Men and women were talking
in loud voices. One woman stared at me, and called my name, and said
something that frightened me terribly. I went into a doorway--and then
I saw Mr. Krebs. I didn't know who he was. He just said, 'You'd better
come with me, Miss Hutchins,' and I went with him. I thought afterwards
that it was a very courageous thing for him to do, because he was so
popular with the mill people, and they had such a feeling against us.
Yet they didn't seem to resent it, and made way for us, and Mr. Krebs
spoke to many of them as we passed. After we got to State Street, I
asked him his name, and when he told me I was speechless. He took off
his hat and went away. He had such a nice face--not at all ugly when you
look at it twice--and kind eyes, that I just couldn't believe him to be
as bad as father and George think he is. Of course he is mistaken," she
added hastily, "but I am sure he is sincere, and honestly thinks he can
help those people by telling them what he does."

The question shot at me during the meeting rankled still; I wanted to
believe that Krebs had inspired it, and her championship of him gave
me a twinge of jealousy,--the slightest twinge, to be sure, yet a
perceptible one. At the same time, the unaccountable liking I had
for the man stirred to life. The act she described had been so
characteristic.

"He's one of the born rebels against society," I said glibly. "Yet I do
think he's sincere."

Maude was grave. "I should be sorry to think he wasn't," she replied.
After I had bidden her good night at the foot of the stairs, and gone to
my room, I reflected how absurd it was to be jealous of Krebs. What
was Maude Hutchins to me? And even if she had been something to me, she
never could be anything to Krebs. All the forces of our civilization
stood between the t