n hers; they were still
watching the little group that was moving downward to the valley.

"He is a strange man, your--the smith," whispered Vincenza at last. "I
was always half afraid of him."

Cain suddenly seemed to awaken from deep thought. He turned, took the
girl's hand, and started to walk back toward the hospice with her. As
they walked, he gazed into the distance with wide open eyes. He was
still carrying his hat in his hand. Suddenly he stood still. "It seems
to me," said he, with a dreamy look, "that we have all misunderstood
him--my father."

Vincenza dared not reply, his manner was so unusual. He walked silently
along beside her, and that evening, and many times afterward, his
thoughts were more with Stephen, who was gone and never came back, than
with Vincenza, on whom his heart was set, and from whom he soon learned
that Simmen would not refuse her to him.

JAKOB SCHAFFNER

* * * * * *

THE IRON IDOL

TRANSLATED BY AMELIA VON ENDE

In one of our great industrial centres lived a childless couple, a
workingman and his wife, by the name of Hoeflinger. They had been
married ten years and had become resigned and accustomed to their
solitude. The husband turned the sentiment, which no offspring of his
could claim, toward the hopes and the aims of his class. He was known
as a well-read, serious and reliable man, whose political activity was
founded upon practical reality rather than theory and who was hostile
to the exploitation of principles popular with the ordinary run of
Socialist party leaders, but not always truly beneficial to the
proletariat. Hence he was held in higher esteem by the trades union
than by the party. He usually had a young man in his home who not only
enjoyed room and board at moderate price, but, if he had a good head,
was trained by Hoeflinger in class-consciousness and a practical
knowledge of the tactics of life. Thus Hoeflinger had no difficulty in
filling the vacancy whenever his boarder drifted away.

As he showed a fatherly solicitude toward these youths, so his wife
spent upon them her unused motherly gift and feeling. She had never
buried any of the ardent desires of her womanhood; she had never known
sickness. In spite of the shadow of her childlessness she went on
living her full, significant woman's life, and constantly defied the
gnawing thoughts of w