her stores we were discharged. And now we'd be
blacklisted."

"Ah, God, that's true!" exclaimed the priest. "But now then, Miss
Carmen, we'll begin."

For an hour the girl wrote small checks, and the priest handed them
out to the eager laborers. They worked feverishly, for they knew that
at any moment they might be apprehended.

"Ah, you men!" cried Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself.
"Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as
you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own
its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters!
But then, ye're so ignorant!"

"Don't, Father!" pleaded Carmen, "don't! They have suffered so much!"

"Ah, lass, it's but love that I'm dealin' out to 'em, God knows! And
yet, it's they that are masters of the situation, only they don't know
it! There's the pity! They've no leaders, except such as waste their
money and leave 'em in the ditch! The world's social schemes, Miss
Carmen, don't reach such as these. They're only sops. And they've got
the contempt of the wage-earners."

"The Church, Father, could do much for these people, if--"

"Don't hesitate, Miss Carmen. You mean, if we didn't give all our
thought to the rich, eh? But still, it's wholly up to the people
themselves, after all. And, mark me, when they do rise, why, such men
as Ames won't know what's hit 'em!"

The door was thrown violently open at that moment, and a squad of
soldiers under the command of a lieutenant entered.

Carmen and Father Danny rose and faced them. The mill hands stood like
stone images, their faces black with suppressed rage. The lieutenant
halted his men, and then advanced to the girl.

"Is a woman named Carmen Ariza here?" he demanded rudely.

"I am she," replied the fearless girl.

"Come with us," he said in a rough voice.

"That she will not!" cried Father Danny, suddenly pulling the girl
back and thrusting himself before her.

The lieutenant raised his hand. The soldiers advanced. The mill hands
quickly formed about the girl. And then, with a yell of rage, they
threw themselves upon the soldiers.

For a few minutes the little room was a bedlam. The crazed strikers
fought without weapons, except such as they could wrest from the
soldiers. But they fought to the death. One of them seized Carmen and
threw her beneath the table at which she had been working. Above her
raged the desperate conflict. The shouting and cu