ht a woman sat reading a
magazine. She had a strong rather clever face which would have been
appealing if it were not for the bitter impatient glance she gave us as
we entered.

"Talk low, boys, our little girl's asleep," Marsh said. "Say, Sally," he
continued, with his faint, derisive smile, "here's a writer come to see
you."

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," she said, then relapsed into a stiff
silence. I tried to break through her awkwardness but entirely without
avail. I grew more and more sure of my first impression, that this woman
hated her husband's friends, his strikes, his "proletariate." She was
smart, pushing, ambitious, I thought, just the kind that would have got
on in any middle western town. Eleanore must meet her.

Then presently I noticed that only Marsh was talking. I glanced at Joe
and was startled by the intensity in his eyes.

For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me
to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities,
towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike--and
then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a
wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into
this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words--"Drawn into
revolution."

"Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that
typhoid left?"

Joe laughed quickly, confusedly.

Soon after that I left them.

CHAPTER IX

The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work.
When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me
curiously.

"Why?" he asked.

I spoke of the impending strike.

"Have you met Marsh?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"Do you like him?"

"No."

"But he struck you as big."

"Yes--he did."

"Are you getting interested in strikes?"

"I want to see a big one close."

"Why?"

"Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they?
I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled:

"You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated."

"Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head."

"I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh.
I'll be interested to see what you do."

I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's
inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out
by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things."

"Oh that's all r