his sweet strike done to
_you_?"

"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "Where is Dad?"

"Up in his room."

"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath:

"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain
on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike--and some
days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He
talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad. Sometimes
when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad."

I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural,
clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me.

"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed
the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then
his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me
sternly:

"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions--glad you've
come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife.
She's been over here often lately--and she's worth a dozen like you and
Sue. Have you seen Sue?"

"Yes."

"Well, _she's_ all right."

I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me:

"I had quite a time, my boy--I had to keep right at her." Another quick
look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her."

"Never mind, Dad, it's over now."

"I had to make her feel the noose, I mean the chair," he went on in
those thick, mumbling tones, "and that she'd have to choose between that
and a decent Christian home--like the home her mother had. She was a
wonderful woman, your mother," he wandered off abruptly. "If she'd only
understood me--seen what it was I was trying to do--for American
shipping--Yankee sails!" He sank down in his chair exhausted, and I
noticed he was breathing hard. "I'm all right, my boy, I'm quite all
right----"

With a sudden rush of pity and of love and deep alarm, I bent gently
over him:

"Of course you are--why Dad, old boy--just take it easy--quiet, you
know--we're going to pull right out of this----"

The tears welled suddenly up in his eyes:

"I'm lonely, boy--I'm glad you're here!"

Presently I went down to Sue:

"When is the doctor coming next?"

"Not till this afternoon," she said.

"I'll be home to-night for supper. Phone me what he says."

"All right--where are you going now? To Joe?"

"Yes, Sis," I said.

She turned and went quickly out of the room.

* * *