be up early, Kathleen, to go to the hospital. Will you lend me a
hat?"

"That I will."

"And an old coat? I'll send it back to you."

"Anything I have."

"Oh, Kathleen, do you think I'll get there in time? Shall I be too
late?"

"There's the best of chances. Old folks have more strength than we give
them credit for. Probably she'll be better again."

Hertha still clutched her friend's hand. "Do you remember the old Major,
Kathleen, when he told me to keep out of the conflict?"

"Indeed I do. Wasn't he cross that evening!"

"I tried to follow his advice. I wanted not to fight, just to let things
go the easiest way, but I couldn't."

Her friend, looking at her, thinking of the past and of the days to
come, of the loneliness of a life among the whites and the tragic
circumscription of a life among the colored, could find no comforting
answer. She was face to face with a harder problem than any she had
tried to solve. The machine, sucking the vitality of the child; the long
day of toiling men and women; fierce, relentless competition; there were
tools with which to battle against these; she had used them and in the
end she and her comrades would conquer with them. But where were the
tools with which to fight the base cruelty, the cheap conceit that left
a boy on a hospital bed to-night bruised in body and spirit, and sent
this gentle girl to her half-crazed with grief and pain? In the church?
The persecutors of the black man were the pillars of the church. In the
state? When the Negro was beaten or shot or lynched the state winked
slyly at the white offender. In the working class? They were brothers of
the blacks when they were hungry. An advantage won and they, too,
persecuted the weak. Where then were the tools? Where, unless with the
black men and women themselves; but if they took them up how unequal
must be the battle!

"I couldn't keep out of it," Hertha said again, a quizzical look coming
for a moment to her face. "I wouldn't picket, you remember, but that
wasn't my conflict. It wasn't mine until it came to Tom."

Kathleen kissed her. "You'll get a little sleep now."

"I'll try, but I don't mind lying awake with you and Billy near."

She said the name shyly, looking with questioning glance as if to ask
whether her welcome would be a cordial one when her friend's husband
knew her story.

"He'll be glad to see you! He's been blaming me in his heart for staying
away from you, though he'd never say a w