burned
to death."

It seemed to Carmen as she listened to the woman that the carnal
mind's chamber of horrors was externalized there in the little town of
Avon, existing with the dull consent of a people too ignorant, too
imbruted, too mesmerized by the false values of life to rise and
destroy it.

All that cold winter afternoon the girl went from door to door. There
was no thought of fear when she met dull welcomes, scowls, and
menacing glances. In humble homes and wretched hovels; to Magyar,
Pole, Italian alike; to French Canadian, Irish and Portuguese; and to
the angry, the defiant, the sodden, the crushed, she unfolded her
simple banner of love, the boundless love that discriminates not, the
love that sees not things, but the thoughts and intents of the heart
that lie behind them. And dark looks faded, and tears came; withered
hearts opened, and lifeless souls stirred anew. She knew their
languages; and that knowledge unlocked their mental portals to her.
She knew their thoughts, and the blight under which they molded; and
that knowledge fell like the sun's bright rays upon them. She knew
God, their God and hers; and that knowledge began, even on that dull,
gray afternoon, to cut into the chains of human rapacity which
enslaved them.

At six that evening she stood at the tall iron gate of the mill yard.
Little Tony was at her side, clutching her hand. A single electric
lamp across the street threw a flickering, yellow light upon the snow.
The great, roaring mills were ablaze with thousands of glittering
eyes. Suddenly their monster sirens shrieked, a blood-curdling yell.
Then their huge mouths opened, and a human flood belched forth.

Carmen gazed with riveted sight. They were not the image and likeness
of God, these creatures, despite the doctrinal platitudes of the
Reverend Darius Borwell and the placid Doctor Jurges. They were not
alive, these stooping, shuffling things, despite the fact that the
religiously contented Patterson Moore would argue that God had
breathed the spirit of life into the thing of dust which He created.
And these children, drifting past in a great, surging throng! Fathers
and mothers of a generation to come! Carmen knew that many of them,
despite their worn looks, were scarcely more than ten years old. These
were the flesh and blood upon which Ames, the jungle-beast, waxed
gross! Upon their thin life-currents floated the magnificent
_Cossack_!

She turned away in silence. Yes, she