r and greeted her. She turned
white to the lips, and her heart fluttered painfully. It was only Ned
Hermanmann, fatter, bronder-faced, jollier looking than ever. He had sat
across the aisle from her for three terms at school. He and she had been
monitors together of the composition books for one term. The day the
powder works blew up at Pinole, breaking every window in the school,
he and she had not joined in the panic rush for out-of-doors. Both had
remained in the room, and the irate principal had exhibited them, from
room to room, to the cowardly classes, and then rewarded them with a
month's holiday from school. And after that Ned Hermanmann had become a
policeman, and married Lena Highland, and Saxon had heard they had five
children.

But, in spite of all that, he was now a policeman, and Billy was now a
striker. Might not Ned Hermanmann some day club and shoot Billy just as
those other policemen clubbed and shot the strikers by her front steps?

"What's the matter, Saxon?" he asked. "Sick?"

She nodded and choked, unable to speak, and started to move toward her
car which was coming to a stop.

"I'll help you," he offered.

She shrank away from his hand.

"No; I'm all right," she gasped hurriedly. "I'm not going to take it.
I've forgotten something."

She turned away dizzily, up Broadway to Ninth. Two blocks along Ninth,
she turned down Clay and back to Eighth street, where she waited for
another car.

As the summer months dragged along, the industrial situation in Oakland
grew steadily worse. Capital everywhere seemed to have selected this
city for the battle with organized labor. So many men in Oakland were
out on strike, or were locked out, or were unable to work because of the
dependence of their trades on the other tied-up trade's, that odd jobs
at common labor were hard to obtain. Billy occasionally got a day's work
to do, but did not earn enough to make both ends meet, despite the small
strike wages received at first, and despite the rigid economy he and
Saxon practiced.

The table she set had scarcely anything in common with that of their
first married year. Not alone was every item of cheaper quality, but
many items had disappeared. Meat, and the poorest, was very seldom on
the table. Cow's milk had given place to condensed milk, and even the
sparing use of the latter had ceased. A roll of butter, when they had
it, lasted half a dozen times as long as formerly. Where Billy had been
used to dr