nd I'm going back to a farm."

Roger choked a little on his tea. His mother said, unsteadily, "John
dear, if going back to the farm brings you back to me, I shall thank God
for the strike."

Roger's father scowled at his wife for a moment, then suddenly
something, perhaps the gentleness of her voice and the sweetness of her
eyes, caused him to push his chair back and going around to her side to
kneel with his head against her shoulder.

Roger slipped out of the room, blowing his nose. He went into the back
yard and sat scowling at the swimming pool until he heard the front door
click on his father, then he went to bed.

The following day when Roger went into the office, his father's coat was
hanging on the accustomed hook, but his father was not there. Vaguely
alarmed, Roger started a search through the factory. His alarm proved
unfounded, for he discovered his father in the little building that had
been the original factory. He looked up when Roger came in.

"Look, Rog," he said. "I'd like to take this old machine up to the farm
with us. We could store it somewhere. It's the first machine--the one I
started business with."

Roger nodded but could not speak. Moore looked around the room.

"Well, I've had a good run for my hard work," he said, bitterly. "An old
man at fifty and a worn out farm to spend my old age on."

"You've got Mother and me. And why don't you start again, Father? I'd
help."

"I'm too old, Roger. I've lost my vim. We'll close the shop, to-day. A
man's coming up from Chicago to buy in the machinery."

A half hour later, Moore posted a great sign on the office door. "This
factory goes out of business to-day." Then with the various keys of the
buildings in his pocket, he went home. Roger hung about to see how the
men took the news.

By noon, the two hundred employees of the factory with many of their
wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they
seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By
mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his
father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man
got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should be
destroyed, that men such as he were a menace to America. Roger, standing
by Ole's side, saw suddenly in his inner mind his father's gray head on
his mother's shoulder.

"You lie, you dirty anarchist!" he roared, and heaved a brick at the
speaker's head.