ou know! I was lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man
lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and
three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to
pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and got nine dollars
a week."

A little hand stole up along Carmen's arm. She looked down into the
wondering face of the child. "I--I just wanted to see, _Signorina_, if
you were real."

"I have been wondering that myself, dear," replied the girl, as her
thought dwelt upon what she had been hearing.

"I must go now, Miss," said the widow Marcus, rising. "I promised to
drop in and look after Katie Hoolan's children this afternoon. She's
up at the mills."

"Then I will go with you," Carmen announced. "But I will come back
here," she added, as some little hands seized hers. "If not to-day,
then soon--perhaps to-morrow."

She crossed the cold hall with Mrs. Marcus, and entered the doorway
which led to the little inner room where dwelt the widow. There were a
dozen such rooms in the building, the latter informed her. This one in
particular had been shunned for many years, for it had a bad
reputation as a breeder of tuberculosis. But the rent was low, and so
the widow had taken it after her man was killed. It contained a broken
stove, a dirty bed, and a couple of unsteady chairs. The odor was
fetid. The walls were damp, and the paper which had once covered them
was molding and rotting off.

"It won't stay on," the widow explained, as she saw the girl looking
at it. "The walls are wet all the time. Comes up from the cellar. The
creek overflows and runs into the basement. They call this the
'death-room.'"

Death! Carmen shuddered when she looked about this fearful human
habitation. Yet, "The only death to be feared," said Paracelsus, "is
unconsciousness of God." Was this impoverished woman, then, any less
truly alive than the rich owner of the mills which had robbed her of
the means of existence? And can a civilization be alive to the Christ
when it breeds these antipodal types?

"And yet, who permits them?" Haynerd had once exclaimed. "Ames's
methods are the epitome of hell! But he is ours, and the worthy
offspring of our ghastly, inhuman social system. We alone are to
blame that he debauches courts, that he blinds executives, and that he
buys legislatures! We let him make the laws, and fatten upon the
prey he takes within their limits. Aye, he is the crafty, vicious,
gold-imbrute