it these ten years!" he returned, now recovered from
his surprise, and pleased to talk about his work. "I'd had some
experience in New York in the Bowery district. I came to the
conclusion that there were mighty few down-and-outs who couldn't be
set upon their pins again, given half a chance by any one sufficiently
interested. There's the point. You see, Miss, I believe in my
fellow-men. The results have justified my labors. Oh, it's only
temporary, I know. It ain't going to change the whole social system.
It's a makeshift. But it helps a bit--and I like it.

"But," he continued more seriously, "there's going to be trouble here.
A strike is coming. And it's going to be a bad one. I wish I could
convince Mr. Ames."

"Have you tried?" she asked.

"I've written him several times of late. It doesn't do any good. His
secretary writes back that Mr. Ames is doing all he can. But it's not
much I see he's doing, except to go on sucking the blood from these
poor devils down here!"

They soon reached the tenement where Tony lived, and Carmen asked the
priest to go up with her. He raised a hand and smiled.

"No," he said, "the good woman doesn't like priests. And my labors
don't reach the women anyway, except through the men. They constitute
my field. Some one else must work among the women. I'll wait for you
here."

It was only by making many promises that Carmen could at last get away
from the little group on the fourth floor. But she slipped a bill into
Tony's hands as she went out, and then hurriedly crossed the hall and
opened the unlocked door of the widow Marcus's room. The place was
empty. Carmen pinned a five-dollar bill upon the pillow and hastened
out.

"Now," said the priest, when the girl had joined him in the street
below, "it ain't right to take you to the Mission--"

"We'll go there first," the girl calmly announced. "And then to the
Hall. By the way, there's a telephone in your place? I want to call up
the health officer. I want to report the condition of these
tenements."

The priest laughed. "It won't do any good, Miss. I've camped on his
heels for months. And he can't do anything, anyway. I see that. If he
gets too troublesome to those higher up, why, he gets fired. They
don't want his reports. He isn't here to report on conditions, but to
overlook 'em. It's politics."

"You mean to say that nothing can be done in regard to those awful
buildings which Mr. Ames owns and rents to his mill hands?" sh