hands to her, imploring her to help. And she answered them as she had
answered the agent, "I'll _make_ it my business. I'll tell your story
all over the state and all over the land until the people demand a law
to save you."

It was a hot July night, and Mary, waking in her big many-windowed room,
sat up almost gasping. She wondered what the heat must be like in those
tenement rooms without any windows, with half a dozen or more people
crowded into each one. Slipping out of bed she drew a low rocker to the
window overlooking the river, and with her arms crossed on the sill,
looked out into the darkness. There was only the starlight to-night, and
the colored lights of the wharf boats along the bank. She could not see
the dim outline of the Kentucky shore, but it was a comfort to know that
it was there.

Presently she lifted her head and looked up, her lips parted and a half
frightened throbbing in her ears. It had come over her with an almost
overpowering realization that those voices she was hearing were like
those which Joan of Arc heard. It was the King's Call summoning her
again as it had summoned her at Warwick Hall. Then it was all vague and
shadowy, the thing she was to do. Now she knew with what great task she
was to keep tryst. She was to help in this struggle to free these poor
people from the conditions which bound them. She was to help them reach
out for their birthright, which was nothing more than a fair chance to
help themselves.

Gazing up at the stars, a great wonder swept over her, that she, little
Mary Ware, had been called to a destiny even greater than that of the
Maid of Orleans. For was it not greater to enlist a nation in such
warfare than to ride at the head of an army and spur men on to
bloodshed? This battle, once won, would give not only this generation of
helpless poor their chance for health and decent homes, but would lift
the handicap from their children and all their children's children who
might come after them.

Once, as she sat there, the thought came to her that if she devoted
herself to this cause she might be an old woman before it was
accomplished, and that she would have to give up all hope of the home
she had long planned to have eventually in the Happy Valley. Even in her
exalted mood it seemed a great sacrifice to make, and a long time she
sat there, counting the cost.

"To live in scorn of miserable aims that end in self--" She started as
if a real voice had spoken in he