ed her. "If you'll forgive my saying
so, I think it is better to let him go, and take his chance of getting
work elsewhere. If he were taken back he might be made to suffer. As
things are organized here, the hands are very much at the mercy of the
overseers, and the overseer in that room would be likely to make it
uncomfortable for a hand who had so openly defied him."

With a heavy sigh she bent her puzzled brows on him. "How complicated it
is! I wonder if I shall ever understand it all. _You_ don't think
Dillon's accident was his own fault, then?"

"Certainly not; there are too many cards in that room. I pointed out the
fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago.
An operative may be ever so expert with his fingers, and yet not learn
to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an
automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in the
carding-room."

She sighed again. "The more you tell me, the more difficult it all
seems. Why is the carding-room so over-crowded?"

"To make it pay better," Amherst returned bluntly; and the colour
flushed her sensitive skin.

He thought she was about to punish him for his plain-speaking; but she
went on after a pause: "What you say is dreadful. Each thing seems to
lead back to another--and I feel so ignorant of it all." She hesitated
again, and then said, turning her bluest glance on him: "I am going to
be quite frank with you, Mr. Amherst. Mr. Tredegar repeated to me what
you said to him last night, and I think he was annoyed that you were
unwilling to give any proof of the charges you made."

"Charges? Ah," Amherst exclaimed, with a start of recollection, "he
means my refusing to say who told me that Dr. Disbrow was not telling
the truth about Dillon?"

"Yes. He said that was a very grave accusation to make, and that no one
should have made it without being able to give proof."

"That is quite true, theoretically. But in this case it would be easy
for you or Mr. Tredegar to find out whether I was right."

"But Mr. Tredegar said you refused to say who told you."

"I was bound to, as it happened. But I am not bound to prevent your
trying to get the same information."

"Ah--" she murmured understandingly; and, a sudden thought striking him,
he went on, with a glance at the clock: "If you really wish to judge for
yourself, why not go to the hospital now? I shall be free in five
minutes, and could go with you if you wish