in which you
yourself began your home?"

Mr. Hardy answered never a word to this appeal, but looked into the
young man's face with a gaze he did not forget all day, then wrung his
hand and turned on his heel abruptly and walked rapidly down the street.

James looked after him as he disappeared among the crowds of people
going to their business, and then turned to his own tasks. But
something in him gave him hope. Another something appealed all day to
his inner nature, and he could not shake off the impression of Mr.
Hardy's question--"Are you a Christian?" Even when he went home at
night that question pursued him more strenuously than any other, and
would not give him peace.

Robert Hardy reached his office just in time to see Burns, the foreman,
go out of a side door and cross the yard. The manager followed him and
entered the machine shop in time to see him stop at a machine at the
farthest end of the shop and speak to the man at work there. The man
was a Norwegian, Herman by name. He was running what is called a
planer, a machine for trimming pieces of cold metal just from the
foundry or the casting room. He was at work this morning on one of the
eccentric bars of a locomotive, and it was of such a character that he
could leave the machine for several minutes to do the planing. Burns
talked with this man for a while, and then moved across the floor to
another workman, a small-boned, nervous little fellow, who was in
charge of a boring machine which drove a steel drill through heavy
plates of iron fastened into the frame.

Mr. Hardy came up just as Burns turned away from this man, and touched
him on the shoulder. The foreman started and turned about, surprised
to see the manager.

"Well, Burns, how goes everything this morning?" asked Robert.

"The men here are grumbling because they don't have a holiday, same as
the men in Scoville's department."

"But we can't shut down the whole business, can we?" asked Mr. Hardy,
with a momentary touch of his old-time feeling. "The men are
unreasonable."

"I'm afraid there'll be trouble, sir. I can feel it in the air,"
replied Burns.

Mr. Hardy made no reply in words, but looked about him. Within the
blackened area of the great shop about two hundred men were at work.
The whirl of machinery was constant. The grind of steel on iron was
blended with the rattle of chains and the rolling of the metal
carriages in their tracks. The Genius of Railroading seeme