th the main factory building had been demolished by the explosion.
Everybody asked questions at once and a hundred pairs of hands tried to
help unreel the hose and bring it to bear on the main blaze.

"Turn on the water!" shouted a fireman.

"No! No!" roared a voice, and a man in his undershirt rushed up and
tried to tear the hose away from those that directed it. It was Oscar.

"No! Let her burn! Let her burn! We'll show that infernal hound of a
Moore if he can take our chances away from us!"

"Oh, then 'twas you!" cried Moore, and he leaped for Oscar.

A dozen men sprang to pull them apart, but Roger was there first. He
hung onto his father in desperate silence, while others pulled Oscar
away. Mr. Wolf and Ernest followed the Moores as Roger led the way to a
seat on a heap of debris.

"There, old friend, there!" said Wolf. "Don't take it so hard! I know! I
know! If it was my store it would break the heart of me. But we cannot
break. We cannot."

Roger kept his hand on his father's shoulder. Moore rested his head on
his hand and said nothing.

"It's all right, Daddy! You walloped him a good one," said Roger.

"His old snoot was all over his face," added Ernest in a cheerful voice.

"Hush, boys, come away for a little bit," said Mr. Wolf. And he led the
two back toward the hose. But Roger would not go far. He loitered behind
lest some one should molest that silent figure on the heap of debris.
All the vicinity was brilliant with firelight. And standing waiting thus
he saw a sight that he never was to forget. It was his father, bowing
his head on a piece of the twisted, wrecked machinery--the machinery
into which he had put the passionate hopes and dreams of his manhood.
And moving nearer lest some one else should see, Roger saw that his
father was sobbing as if indeed his heart was broken.

That picture was to direct the entire course of Roger's life. For it
never left him. And at first it filled his boyish mind with such
bitterness that he could not hear of labor and its strivings and
troubles without seeing red.

But as the years on the farm slipped by and the atmosphere of
competition and of feverish ambition gave place to the sweet silences,
the quiet plodding, the placid sureness of farm living, the bitterness
gave way to a dream.

Gradually Roger ceased to blame the factory workmen who had destroyed
his father, or to blame his father for the egotism and selfishness that
had driven his employees into