, hopeful, uncomplaining days of
honest toil and honest effort, only to end in such a scene of shame and
mortification as this! What could Mr. Wells think of his secretary,
chased to her desk with the liquor-bills of her kindred! What would not
Mr. Forrest think! A weaker woman would have found refuge and comfort in
a passion of tears, but her eyes seemed burning. Leaning against the
open casement, she stood there fairly quivering with wrath and the sense
of indignity and wrong. She, too, had recognized Elmendorf's nasal whine
in the anteroom, and felt well assured that he was in some way
responsible for Donnelly's action. Mart had had much to say of late of
the foreigner's convincing logic and thrillingly eloquent appeals to the
workingman. _There_ was the man to wring the neck of capital and bring
the bloated bond-holders to terms, said he. Mart never missed a meeting
where Elmendorf was to speak, and had more than once been brought home,
fuddled, in the cab which conveyed the agitator back to the scene of his
labors in the Allison homestead. The cab was paid for by the Union, and
Elmendorf didn't mind having it wait outside while he assisted Mart
within and stopped to condole with Mrs. Wallen the elder, or Mrs. Wallen
junior, and to inquire significantly, if he did not see her, where Miss
Wallen was; he always supposed the library closed at nine o'clock, and
was not aware, he said, that anybody except the janitor was permitted to
remain there later. He knew very well that the librarian was sometimes
there until nearly midnight. He knew well that it was there and in the
evenings, mainly, that Miss Wallen worked at the transcript of
Forrest's reports. "At least," as he said to himself, and suggested to
others, "that is the _ostensible_ purpose of her frequently prolonged
visits." He often walked by the lighted windows of the sanctum and
occasionally slipped into the dark hall-way, so the watchman later said.
The same irrepressible propensity to meddle in the affairs of everybody
in the household where he was employed, in the councils of the various
labor unions, in the meetings of political associations, in the official
duties or off-hand chats of the men at military head-quarters, in the
management of the Lambert Library, seemed to follow him in his casual
intercourse with this obscure little household. One night when towards
ten o'clock Miss Wallen came blithely down the corridor stairs, she was
surprised to find the t