evils. What's
your remedy? You don't want to abolish property; you've confessed that
property gives YOU your independence!"

Again that curious quiver and flash!

"Yes; but if people haven't decency enough to see for themselves how the
law favors their independence, they must be shown that it doesn't pay to
do to others as they would hate to be done by."

"And you wouldn't try reasoning?"

"They are not amenable to reason."

Stanley took up his hat.

"Well, I think some of us are. I see your point; but, you know, violence
never did any good; it isn't--isn't English."

She did not answer. And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely: "I should
have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters. Remember me to them.
Clara sent her regards;" and, looking round the room in a rather lost
way, he held out his hand.

He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with even a
little pressure.

Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, "Go home the other way,
Batter, past the church."

The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak beams,
bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open
hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before
it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind's eye with curious
fidelity. And those three kids, popping out like that--proof that the
whole thing was not a rather bad dream! 'Queer business!' he thought;
'bad business! That woman's uncommonly all there, though. Lot in what
she said, too. Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like
her!' And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men
coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers. What were
they doing? He stopped the car. There were fifteen or twenty of them,
and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse, where a little
group of four still lingered. 'By George!' he thought, 'those must
be the young Tods going it!' And, curious to see what it might mean,
Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound
to come. First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with
long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness,
had a jovial look. Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man
in shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a
cap pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke. Then came
two old men, one of whom was limping,