ay that!" she answered quietly. "I like him,
too--he seems so kind, so understanding."

"Do you know him?"

"Well,--" she hesitated--"I feel as though I do. I've only met him once,
and that was by accident. It was the day the big strike began, last
spring, and I had been shopping, and started for the mills to get father
to walk home with me, as I used to do. I saw the crowds blocking the
streets around the canal. At first I paid no attention to them, but after
a while I began to be a little uneasy, there were places where I had to
squeeze through, and I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, and
that the people were angry. Men and women were talking in loud voices.
One woman stared at me, and called my name, and said something that
frightened me terribly. I went into a doorway--and then I saw Mr. Krebs.
I didn't know who he was. He just said, 'You'd better come with me, Miss
Hutchins,' and I went with him. I thought afterwards that it was a very
courageous thing for him to do, because he was so popular with the mill
people, and they had such a feeling against us. Yet they didn't seem to
resent it, and made way for us, and Mr. Krebs spoke to many of them as we
passed. After we got to State Street, I asked him his name, and when he
told me I was speechless. He took off his hat and went away. He had such
a nice face--not at all ugly when you look at it twice--and kind eyes,
that I just couldn't believe him to be as bad as father and George think
he is. Of course he is mistaken," she added hastily, "but I am sure he is
sincere, and honestly thinks he can help those people by telling them
what he does."

The question shot at me during the meeting rankled still; I wanted to
believe that Krebs had inspired it, and her championship of him gave me a
twinge of jealousy,--the slightest twinge, to be sure, yet a perceptible
one. At the same time, the unaccountable liking I had for the man stirred
to life. The act she described had been so characteristic.

"He's one of the born rebels against society," I said glibly. "Yet I do
think he's sincere."

Maude was grave. "I should be sorry to think he wasn't," she replied.
After I had bidden her good night at the foot of the stairs, and gone to
my room, I reflected how absurd it was to be jealous of Krebs. What was
Maude Hutchins to me? And even if she had been something to me, she never
could be anything to Krebs. All the forces of our civilization stood
between the two; nor