rawn; and Griswold, savagely
reluctant, was forced to make a concession repeatedly urged and argued
for by the older men among the strikers, namely, that the guarding of
the company's property be entrusted to a picked squad of the
ex-employees themselves.

During these days of turmoil and rioting the transformed idealist passed
through many stages of the journey down a certain dark and mephitic
valley not of amelioration. With the bitter industrial conflict to feed
it, a slow fire within him ate its way into all the foundations, and as
the fair superstructure of character settled, the moral perpendiculars
and planes of projection became more and more distorted. Fairness was
gone, and in its place stood angry resentment, ready to rend and tear.
Pity and ruth were going: the daily report from Margery told of the
lessening chance of life for Andrew Galbraith, and the stirrings evoked
were neither regretful nor compassionate. On the contrary, he knew very
well that the news of Galbraith's death would be a relief for which, in
his heart of hearts, he was secretly thirsting.

It was at the close of the week of tumult that the dreadful beckoning
came. One of the two trained nurses installed at Mereside had been
called away to the bedside of a sick father. Another had been wired for
immediately, but between the going and the coming a night would
intervene. So much Griswold got from Margery over the Iron Works
telephone late in the afternoon of a day thickly besprinkled with the
sidewalk waylayings and riotings. When he reached his Shawnee Street
lodgings at nine o'clock that night he found Miss Grierson's phaeton
standing at the curb.

"Get in," she said, briefly, making room for him in the basket seat. And
when the mare had been given the word to go: "I hope you are not too
tired to chaperon me. I've got to drive over to the college infirmary.
We simply _must_ have another nurse for to-night."

He denied the weariness--most untruthfully--and after that, she made him
talk all the way across town to the college campus; compelled him, and
found him absently irresponsive. Oh, yes; the fight was still going on:
No, they would never give in to the demands of the strikers: Yes, he had
seen Miss Farnham twice since the trouble began; she was frankly agreed
with Raymer's mother and sister; they all wanted peace, and they were
all against him. She led him on, and meanwhile they encountered one
failure after another in the nurse-hunt