of the "other half" that she had so strangely become interested in, and
the old question pressed itself for solution, why, in a Christian land
of plenty, such a state of life for such vast numbers was allowable or
even possible.

With the sound of the dying girl's voice in her ears and the sight of a
nation's legalized poison yet before her vision she rested, and so
engrossed was she with her thoughts that she did not notice the entrance
of her father.

"A penny for your thoughts, my dear."

Jean looked up suddenly. Then she caught her father's hand and drew him
to her side.

"I have seen a death to-day, father--a death, a drunkard, loads of beer
and whisky."

"Crowley dead at last?"

"Maggie."

"Poor girl. No doubt she is better off."

"Yes, better off," repeated Jean. "But, father, I have been thinking of
the whirlwind. You know the Book that has voiced unerringly the stage
play of the ages says destruction is coming as a whirlwind--as a
whirlwind. Can you not catch its roaring under the bluster of silver and
tariff and war? Do you never hear the mutterings of its power? Are there
not signs of the coming whirlwind--signs unmistakable--roastings in the
South and lynchings in the North, bloody strikes from east to west,
deep-seated unrest among the nation's laboring masses, and the steadily
increasing cry of a multitude of suffering and helpless people writhing
under the heel of the great iniquity? Couple the signs of the times,
father, with an indisputable knowledge of corruption in politics, the
inefficacy of the law because of the absolute power of rum and 'boodle'
and the utter absence of any fixed moral principle in the dealings of
the great majority of the old party leaders, and have we not an 'issue'
that imperatively demands the attention of every loyal American?

"The more I think, the less I blame the laboring element for their
dissatisfaction, bordering on madness at times. I feel that they have
just cause to be alarmed. Am I a pessimist, father, or is there a cancer
eating out the nation's life?"

The young woman stood in the center of the room, erect and with arm
extended. The lawyer was looking at her with a gleam of fatherly
admiration; but as she closed the outburst with her question he grew
grave and stroked his beard. The facts were not unfamiliar to him.

"I do wish," he said thoughtfully, "that the laboring element would see
that it is to their interests to stand by that party that pr