Classic Audiobook Collection - Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis audiobook. Genre: drama In a smoky industrial town where the furnaces never seem to cool, Life in the Iron Mills follows Hugh Wolfe, a weary mill hand whose days are measured in heat, soot, and exhaustion. Gifted with a sculptor's eye but trapped by poverty, Hugh works alongside his cousin Deborah, a quiet, fiercely devoted woman who endures long hours and constant hardship simply to stay near him. When a group of wealthy visitors tours the mill, their casual curiosity collides with the workers' relentless reality, and Hugh is briefly pulled into a world that can admire his talent without offering him a way out. As the gulf between classes becomes impossible to ignore, Hugh and Deborah face a tightening web of hunger, ambition, shame, and desperation. Told through a sharp, compassionate narrator who asks the listener to look closely at lives society prefers to overlook, this landmark realist novella confronts the human cost of industrial progress and the question of what becomes of genius when it is born in chains. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:26:21) Chapter 2 (00:56:00) Chapter 3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis. Part 1 Is this the end? O life, as futile then as frail. What hope of answer or redress? A cloudy day. Do you know what that is in a town of ironworks? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable.

The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and looking out can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air. The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy.

streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river, clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here inside is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf, but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black. Smoke everywhere. A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me.

Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream, almost worn out, I think. From the back window I can see a narrow brickyard sloping down to the riverside, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and tawny-colored, La Belle Riviere, drags itself sluggishly along, tired of the heavy weight of boats and coal barges. What wonder! When I was a child I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negro-like river, slavishly bearing its

burden day after day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me today, when from the street window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull besotted faces bent. to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning, skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes, stooping all night over boiling cauldrons of metal, laird by day and dens of drunkenness and infamy, breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist?

You call it an altogether serious thing to be alive. To these men it is a drunken jest, a joke—horrible to angels, perhaps—to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was an idle one. It is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy here? It knows that beyond their waits for it odorous sunlight, quaint old gardens—dusky with soft green foliage of apple-trees, and flushing crimson. with roses, air and fields and mountains.

The future of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant, to be stowed away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard, and after that not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses. Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here idly tapping the window-pane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty backyard and the coal-boats below, fragments of an old story float up before me, a story of this house into which I happen to come to-day. You may think it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or pleasure. I know. Only the

outline of a dull life, that long since with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly lived and lost. Thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy. me lives, like those of the torpid lizards and yonder stagnant water-butt. Lost? There is a curious point for you to settle my friend who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest.

This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes, and come right down with me. Here, into the thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear this story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain dumb for centuries. I want to make it a real thing to you. You, egoist, or pantheist, or Armenian, busy in making straight paths for your feet on the hills, do not see it clearly.

This terrible question which men here have gone mad and died trying to answer. I dare not put this secret into words. I told you it was dumb. These men going by with drunken faces and brains full of unawakened power do not ask it of society or of God. Their lives ask it. Their deaths ask it. There is no reply.

I will tell you plainly that I have a great hope, and bring it to you to be tested. It is this. That this terrible dumb question is its own reply. that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but from the very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world has known of the hope to come. I dare make my meaning no clear, but will only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark as this thick vapour about us, and as

pregnant with death. But if your eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come. My story is very simple. Only what I remember of the life of one of these men, a furnace tender in one of Kirby and John's rolling mills. Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills?

They took the great order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter, run usually with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the half-forgotten story of this wolf more than that of myriads of these furnace hands. Perhaps, because there is a secret, underlying sympathy between that story, and this day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine, or perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the wolves lived. There were the father and son, both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby and John's mills for

making railroad iron, and Deborah, their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton mills. The house was rented then to half a dozen families. The wolves had two of the cellar rooms. The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was Welsh, had spent half his life in the Cornish tin mines. You may pick the Welsh emigrants, Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the windows any day. They are a trifle more filthy.

Their muscles are not so brawny. They stoop more. When they are drunk they neither yell nor shout nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure, unmixed blood, I fancy, shows itself in the slight angular bodies and sharply cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the wolves lived here. Their lives were like those of their class, incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses, drinking—God and the distillers only know what, with an occasional night in jail to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives? Of the portion given to them and these their

duplicates swarming the streets to-day? Nothing beneath? All? So many a political reformer will tell you, and many a private reformer, too, who was gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged, hardened. One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women stopped outside of the cellar door. They were going home from the cotton mill. "'Good-night, Deb,' said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of them. "'Tes a ball to Miss Potts is to-night. You'd best come.'

"'Indeed, Teb, if he'll come, he'll have fun,' said a shrill Welsh voice in the crowd. Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman who was groping for the latch of the door. No. No? Where's Kit small, then? But Gora? On the spools?

Alice behind? That we helped her we dud? And with ye? Let's deb alone. It's on daise and fretting a quiet body. Be the powers and we'll have a night of it. There'll be lashing's a drink. The Vardent be blessed and praised for it.

They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag the woman wolf off with them. But being pacified, she staggered away. Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and after considerable stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip that sent a yellow glimmer over the room. It was low, damp, the earthen floor covered with a green, slimy moss, a fetid air smothering the breath.

Old wolf lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was a pale, meek little man, with a white face and red-rabbit eyes. The woman Deborah was like him. Only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a slouching bonnet. When she walked one could see that she was deformed, almost a hunchback. She trod softly so as not to waken him, and went through into the room beyond. There she found by the half-extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold, boiled potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she untied her bonnet, which hung limp and wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper.

It was the first food that had touched her lips since morning. There was enough of it, however. There is not always. She was hungry, one could see that easily enough, and not drunk, as most of her companions would have been found at this hour. She did not drink, this woman. Her face told that, too. Nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up,

some love or hope it might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone. While she was skinning the potatoes and munching them, a noise behind her made her stop. "'Janey,' she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness. "'Janey, are you there?' A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young girl emerged, staring sleepily at the woman. "'Debra?' she said at last.

"'I'm here the night.' "'Yes, child. "'Hors welcome,' she said, quietly eating on. The girl's face was haggard and sickly. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and hunger, real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate blue, glooming out from black shadows with a pitiful fright. I was alone, she said timidly. Where's the father? asked Deborah, holding out a potato which the girl greedily seized.

He's bian't, with Haley, in the stone house? Did you ever hear the word tale from an Irish mouth? I came here. Hugh told me never to stay me alone. Hugh? Yes. A vexed frown crossed. her face. The girl saw it and added quickly. "'I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch last till the morning.'

The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch in a tin pail, and pour her own measure of ale into a bottle. Tying on her bonnet she blew out the candle. "'Lay you down, Janie dear,' she said gently, covering her with the old rags. "'Hor can eat the potatoes if whore's hungry.' "'Where are you going, Deb? The rain's sharp.' To the mill with Hugh's supper. Let him bite her the marn. Sit you down. No, no, sharply pushing her off. The boy'll starve.

She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily as the woman, pale in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter. The long rows of houses, except an occasional logger beer-shop, were closed. Now and then she met a band of mill-hands skulking to or from their work. Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast machinery of system

by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are divided into watches that release. leave each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only for a day in the week, in half courtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled. But as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury. The clamour begins with fresh, breathless vigor. The engines sob and shriek like gods in pain. As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these thousand engines

sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a mile below the city limits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from standing twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost nightly walk to take this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to rest, and she knew she should receive small word of thanks. Perhaps if she had possessed an artist's eye the picturesque oddity of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seemed shorter, but to her the mills were only somat delish to look at by night. The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock, which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while the

river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a city of fires that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every horrible form, pits of flame waving in the wind, liquid metal flames writhing in torturous streams through the sand, wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing. And through all, crowsy, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire.

It was like a street in hell. Even Deborah muttered as she crept through, "'Looks like the devil's place?' It did, in more ways than one. She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a furnace. He had not time to eat his supper, so she went behind the furnace and waited. a few men were with him, and they noticed her only by a, "'Hur comes to hunchback, Wolf?'

Deborah was stupid with sleep. Her back pained her sharply, and her teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and dripped from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding the pail, and waiting. "'Hote woman! You look like a drowned cat! Come near to the fire!' said one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes. She shook her head. Both had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man, and came closer. "'I did not think. Give me my supper, woman!' She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick instinct she saw that he was

not hungry, was eating to please her. Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light. "'Is't good hugh? To e'er's a bit sour, I feared.' "'No, good enough,' he hesitated a moment. "'You're tired, poor lass. "'Bite here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash and go to sleep.' He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed. The half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and cold shiver. Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes

like a limp, dirty rag, yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime. More fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger, even more fit to be a type of her class. Deeper yet, if one could look, was there nothing worth reading in this wet, faded thing, half covered with ashes? No story of a soul filled with groping, passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce jealousy? Of years of weird trying to please the one human being whom she loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him?

If anything like this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull-washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its faint signs—not the half-clothed furnace-tender—wolf, certainly. Yet he was kind to her. It was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats that swarmed in the cellar—kind to her in just the same way. She knew that. And it might be that very knowledge that had given to her face its apathy and vacancy, more

than her low, torpid life. One sees that dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's faces, in the very midst it may be of their warmest summer's day, and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no summer for this woman. So the stupor and vacancy had time to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one guessed it. So the gnawing was the fiercer.

She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening through the monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far distance, shrinking back whenever the man wolf happened to look towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique, set apart.

She knew that, down under all the vileness and coarseness of his life, there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure, that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness which never left her, came like a sting the recollection of the dark blue eyes, and the lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow of beauty and of grace. Little Janie, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as her only friend.

That was the sharp thought, the bitter thought that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it. Are pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house or your own heart? Your heart, which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy. Be the octave high or low. If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay,

and drag out from the hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost horror would terrify you more. A reality of soul starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the besotted faces on the street. I can paint nothing of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life of one man. Whatever muddy depth of soul history lies beneath, you can read according to the eyes God has

given you. Wolf, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping to receive orders. Physically nature had promised the man but little. He had already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man. His muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his face, a meek woman's face, haggard, yellow with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of the girl men. Molly Wolfe was his sobriquet. He was never seen in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom, when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always

thrashed, pummeled to a jelly. The man was game enough when his bulls. blood was up, but he was no favourite in the mill. He had the taint of school-learning on him—not to a dangerous extent—only a quarter or so in the free-school, in fact, but enough to ruin him as a good hand in a fight. For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered. Silent, with foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness, in innumerable curious ways. This one, for instance. In the neighboring furnace buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run.

Coral, we call it here. A light, porous substance of a delicate waxen flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this coral, Wolf, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and moulding figures. Hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely beautiful. Even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking,

until his watch came again, working at one figure for months, and when it was finished, breaking it to pieces, perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A morbid gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness and crime, and hard grinding labour. I want you to come down and look at this wolf, standing there among the lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that you may judge him justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back, as he does every day at his birth in vice, his starved infancy,

to remember the heavy years he has groped through as boy and man, the slow heavy years of constant hot work. So long ago he began that he thinks sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it will ever end. that God has put into this man's soul a fierce thirst for beauty, to know it, to create it, to be something he knows not what, other than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a passion of pain.

When his nature starts up with a mad cry of rage against God, man, whoever it is that is forced this vile, slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man was by habit only a coarse vulgar labourer, familiar with sights and words you would blush to name. Be just. When I tell you about this night, see him as he is. Be just, not like man's law which seizes on one isolated fact, but like God's judging

angel, whose clear, sad eyes saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless nights, when sick with starving, his soul fainted in him, before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all. I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him unawares. These great turning days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven, or hell." End of Part 2 of Life in the Iron Mills.

This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Clett. Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis. Part two. Wolf, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron with his pole, dullly thinking only how many rails the lump would yield. It was late, nearly Sunday morning. Another hour and the heavy work would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day. The work-win were growing more noisy, shouting as they had to do to be heard

over the deep clamour of the mills. Suddenly they grew less boisterous, at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had happened. After a moment the silence came near, the men stopped their jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head, saw the cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as they came. Visitors often came to see the mills after night. Except by growing less noisy, the men took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolf worked was near the bounds of the works. They halted there, hot and tired. A walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out of sight, turned over to sleep.

Wolf, seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor and watched them keenly. He knew some of them—the overseer, Clark, a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners, and a Dr. May, one of the town physicians. The other two were strangers. Wolf came closer. He seized eagerly every chance that brought him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down on him perpetually with the glamour of another order. of being.

What made the difference between them? That was the mystery of his life. He had a vague notion that perhaps tonight he could find it out. One of the strangers sat down on a pile of bricks, and beckoned young Kirby to his side. This is hot, with a vengeance! A match, please! Lighting his cigar. But the walk is worth the trouble.

If it were not that you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works looks like Dante's Inferno. Kirby laughed. Yes, yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb, pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows. Judging from the faces of some of your men, said the other, they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's vision some day. Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands for the first time. They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set I fancy, eh, Clark? The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just then, giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business of the firm to a sharp, peering little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on the crown of his hat, a reporter for one of the city papers, getting up a series of reviews of the leading manufactories. The other gentleman had accompanied them merely for amusement. They were silent until the notes were finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering their faces from the intolerable heat.

At last the overseer concluded with, "'I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain.' "'Here, some of you men,' said Kirby. "'Bring up those boards. We may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It cannot last much longer at this rate.' "'Pig metal,' mumbled the reporter. "'Ull coal facilities.

Um, hands employed, twelve hundred. Batuman. Um, all right, I believe, Mr. Clark. Sinking fund. What did you say was your sinking-funking-fund? fund?" "'Twelve hundred hands,' said the stranger, the young man who had first spoken. Do you control their votes, Kirby?'

"'Control? No,' the young man smiled complacently. But my father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November. No force-work you understand, only a speech or two to hint to form themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The Invincible Ruffs, I believe that is their name. I forget the motto. Our country's hope, I think.

There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused light in his cool, gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in the city, spending a couple of months in the borders of a slave-state, to study the institutions of the South, a brother-in-law of Kirby's, Mitchell.

He was an amateur gymnast, hence his anatomical eye, A patron in a blaze way of the prize-ring, a man who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent gentlemanly way, who took Kant, Navalis, humbled, for what they were worth in his own scales, accepting all, despising nothing in heaven, earth or hell, but a one-idea man, with temper yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his self was touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States. As he knocked the ash from his cigar, Wolf caught with a quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music, low, even, with cording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging to the thorough-bred gentleman. Wolf, scraping away the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it

with his artist sense, unconscious that he did so. The rain did not cease. Clark and the reporter left the mills, the other, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more unintelligible to the furnace tenders whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket, and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly.

At every sentence, Wolf listened more and more like a dumb, hopelessly. animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul. Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great gulf never to be passed. Never.

The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen Savior was a keynote to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong, even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with madly to-night. The men began to withdraw the metal from the cauldrons. The mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands, who fed the fires, and those who had no lodgings, and slept usually on the ash-heaps. The three strangers sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the furnaces, laughing now and then at some jest of Kirby's. "'Do you know,' said Mitchell, "'I like this view of the works better than when the glare was fiercest?' These heavy shadows in the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red smouldering lights to be the half-shot eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in the den.

Kirby laughed. You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too real for me to fancy a close proximity in the darkness, unarmed, too. The others rose, buttoning their overcoats and lighting cigars. Raining still, said Dr. May, and hard.

Where did we leave the coach, Mitchell? At the other side of the works. Kirby, what's that? Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as suddenly turning a corner the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness. A woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in some wild gesture of warning. "'Stop! Make that fire-burn there!' cried Kirby, stopping short. The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.

Mitchell drew a long breath. "'I thought it was alive,' he said, going up curious. The others followed. "'Not marble, eh?' asked Kirby, touching it. One of the lower overseers stopped. "'Coral, sir.' "'Who did it?' Can't say.

Some of the hands, chipped it out in off-hours. Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh tint the stuff has! Do you see, Mitchell?' I see. He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it—a nude woman's form—muscular, grown coarse with labor—the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant longing—one idea—there it was

in the tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a starving wolves. Kirby and Dr. May walked round it—critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him strangely. "'Not badly done,' said Dr. May. "'Where did the fellow learn that sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them. They are groping, do you see? Clutching, the peculiar action of a man dying of thirst.

They have ample facilities for studying anatomy,' sneered Kirby, glancing at the half-naked figures. "'Look,' continued the doctor, at this bony wrist and the strange sinews of the instep, a working-woman, the very type of her class. "'God forbid,' muttered Mitchell. "'Why?' demanded May. "'What does the fellow intend by the figure? I cannot catch the meaning.'

"'Ask him,' said the other, dryly. "'There he stands,' pointing to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men leaning on his ash-rake. The doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men put on when talking to these people. "'Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this. I'm sure I don't know why. "'But what did you mean by it?'

"'She be hungry.' "'Wolf's eyes answered Mitchell, "'not the doctor.' "'Oh! But what a mistake you've made, my fine fellow! "'You have given no sign of starvation to the body. "'It is strong, terribly strong. "'It has the mad, half-desparing gesture of drowning.' "'Wolf stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell,

"'who saw the soul of the thing he knew. "'But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself now, "'mocking, cruel. relentless. "'Not hungry for meat?' the furnace tender said at last. "'What then? Whiskey?' jeered Kirby with a coarse laugh. Wolf was silent a moment, thinking.

"'I don't know,' he said, with a bewildered look. "'It mebbe? Somat to make her live, I think, like you. Whiskey'll do it in a way.' The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust somewhere, not at Wolf. He broke out impatiently. Are you blind?

Look at that woman's face. It asks questions of God and says, I have a right to know. Good God, how hungry it is. They looked a moment. Then May turned to the mill-owner. Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?

Keep them at puddling iron? Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him. "'Se nae not my affair. I have no fancy for nursing infant genius. I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches. The Lord will take care of his own, or else they can work out their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder which any man can scale.

Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish all social ladders and put us all in a flat table-land? A. May?" The doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this woman's face, and troubled these men. We waited for an answer, and receiving none went on, warming with his subject. I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of liberty or egalite will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do the lowest part of the world's work should be

machines, nothing more, hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste, reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. many nerves to sting them to pain? What if God had put your brain with all its agony of touch into your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that? You think you could govern the world better, laughed the doctor. I do not think at all. That is true philosophy. Drift with the

stream because you cannot dive deep enough to find bottom, eh? Exactly, rejoined Kirby. I do not think. I wash my hands of all social problems—slavery, caste, white, or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit, the pay hour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if they cut coral or cut each other's throats, the more popular amusement of the two, I am not responsible. The doctor sighed, a good, honest sigh from the depths of his stomach. God, help us! Who is responsible? Not I, I tell you, said Kirby. testily. What has the man who pays them money to do with their soul's concerns more than the grocer or butcher who takes it? And yet, said Mitchell's cynical voice, look at her. How hungry she is!

Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question. What shall we do to be saved? Only Wolf's face, with its heavy weight of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which looked the soul of his class, only Wolf's face turned towards Kirby's. Mitchell laughed, a cool musical laugh. "'Money has spoken,' he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the air of an amused spectator at a play. "'Are you answered?'

Turning to Wolf his clear magnetic face. "'Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the soul of the man lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the furnace tender as he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning. Only the man was the more amusing study of the two. Are you answered? Why may look at him?—de profundis clamavi—or, to quote in English, hungry and thirsty his soul faints in him. And so money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby. Very clear the answer, too. I think I remember reading the same word somewhere, washing your hand an ode cologne, and saying,

I am innocent of the blood of this man, see ye to it. Kirby flushed angrily. You quote scripture freely. Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line which may amend my meaning. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me. Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of the word.

Now, doctor, the pocket of the world, having uttered its voice, What has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist in a small way, Nasspa? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut coral better, or your destiny. Go on, May. I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night, rejoined the doctor, seriously. He went to Wolfe and put a hand kindly on his arm. Something of a vague idea possessed the doctor's brain that much good was to be done here by a friendly word or two.

A latent genius be warmed into life by a waited-for Sunday. beam. Here it was, he had brought it, so he went on complacently. Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man? Do you understand?" Talking down to the capacity of his hear, it is a way people have with children and men like Wolf. Do you live a better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself anything he chooses.

God has given you stronger powers than many men—me, for instance." May stopped, heated. glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the doctor's flurry and generous heat and self-approval into his will, with those slow, absorbing eyes of his. Make yourself what you will. It is your right. A-no? quietly. Will you help me?

Mitchell laughed again. The doctor turned now in a passion. You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know if I'm not the means. You know if I I had, it is in my heart to take this boy and educate him for the glory of God and the glory of John May." May did not speak for a moment. Then controlled, he said, "'Why should one be raised when myriads are left? I have not the money, boy, to Wolfe shortly.' "'Money?' he said it over slowly, as one repeats the guest answer to a riddle doubtfully.

"'That is it? Money?' "'Yes. "'Money. That is it,' said Mitchell, rising and drawing his furred coat about him. "'You've found the cure for all the world's diseases. Come, May, find your good humor and come home. This damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your St. Simonian doctrines to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the rights of the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher wages.

That will be the end of it. Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mill? asked Kirby, turning to Wolf. He spoke kindly. It was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Dr. May walked up and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped. "'Go back, Mitchell. You say the pocket in the heart of the world speak without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste, culture, refinement? Go!' Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head indolently. and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a thick, unclean odour, the slightest motion

of his hand marked that he perceived it, and his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said nothing, only quickened his angry tramp. "'Besides,' added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "'it would be of no use. I am not one of them.' "'You do not mean,' said May, facing him. "'Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the peoples has worked down for good or evil. Fermented instead carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through history, and you will know it.

What will this lowest deep? Thieves, Magdalens, Negroes, do with the light filtered through ponderous church creeds, bucconian theories, Goethe schemes? Someday, out of their bitter need, will be thrown up their own light-bringer, their Jean-Paul, their Cromwell, their Messiah. Ba, was the doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he adopted the theory. For when, night and morning, afterwards,

he prayed that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at heart, recognizing an accomplished duty. Wolf and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach drove off. The doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way, telling him to, take care of himself, and to remember it was his right to rise. Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money, which he found and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all of them. The man sat down on the cinder road, looking up into the murky sky.

"'To be late, you—' Will not her come?' He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his own. his sight against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden light flashed over yourself, your world, God? When you stood on a mountain peak seeing your life's that might have been, as it is, one quick instant when custom lost its force and everyday usage, when your friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light, your soul was bared, and the grave, a foretaste of the nakedness of the judgment day?

So it came before him, his life that night. night. The slow tides of pain he had borne gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into his skin. Before these things had been a dull aching into his consciousness. Tonight they were reality. He gripped the filthy red shirt that clung, stiff with soot about him, and tore it savagely from his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes, and the heart beneath that, and the soul, God knows. Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him, the pure face, the delicate sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he knew of beauty or truth.

In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a something like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain, a man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by nature, "'Raining, the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men. And yet his instinct taught him that he too—' He—' He looked at himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands with a cry, and then was silent. When all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolf had not been vague in his ambitions. They were practical, slowly built up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do.

Through years he had day by day, made this hope. a real thing to himself, a clear, projected figure of himself, as he might become. Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women working at his side up with him. Sometimes he forgot this defined hope in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape, out of the wet, the pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere, only for one moment of free air on a hillside, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in the sunshine. But to-night, He panted for life. The savage strength of his nature was roused.

His cry was fierce to God for justice. "'Look at me,' he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his puny chest savagely. "'What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no better? My fault? My fault? My fault?' He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse,

seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to the fashion of women. "'God forgive me, woman. Things go harder with you, nor me. It's a worse share.' He got up and helped her to rise, and they went doggedly down the muddy street side by side.

"'It's all wrong?' he muttered slowly. "'All wrong? I don't understand. But it'll end some day.' "'Come home, Hugh,' she said, coaxingly, for he had stopped, looking around, bewildered. "'Home? and back to the mill?' He went on saying this over to himself,

as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair. She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold. They reached the cellar at last. Old Wolf had been drinking since she went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janie slept heavily in the corner. He went up to her,

touching softly the worn white arm with his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him as he stood there, he wiped the drops from his forehead and went into the room beyond livid trembling a hope trifling perhaps but very dear had died just then out of the poor puddler's life as he looked at the sleeping innocent girl some plan for the future, in which she had borne apart. He gave it up that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us, his face grew a shade paler, that was all. But somehow, the man's soul, as God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards. Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which she placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She had seen the look on his face as he turned away, her own

grew deadly. Yet as she came up to him her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet, holding his face in his hands. "'Hugh!' she said softly. He did not speak. "'Hugh! Titor hear what the man said! Him with the clear voice! "'Totor hear! Moni! Money! That it would do all!' He pushed her away. Gently, but he was worn out. Her rasping tone fretted him. hugh the candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls and the woman standing there he looked at her she was young in deadly earnest her faded eyes and wet ragged figure caught from their frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty

hugh it is true money'll do it oh hugh boy listen to me he said it true it is money ah no go back i do not want you here Hugh, it is to last time, I'll never wor at her again." There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back. "'Here till me only to-night, if one a-to-witch people would come, then we heard oft home, and give her all her wants? What then? Say, Hugh!' "'What do you mean?'

"'I mean, money!' Her whisper shrilled through his brain. "'If one oft witch-dwarves would come at Elaine Moors to-night and give her money to go out, out, I say, out, lad, or to sun shines, and to Heath grows, and to ladies walk in silken gones, and good stays all to time, or to man lives that talked to us to-night, Hugh knows, Hugh could walk there like a king. He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in her eager haste. If I were to witch-dwarf, if I had to money, would her thank me? Would her take me out of this place, would her and Janie? I would not come into de grand

house her would build, to vex her with a hunch, only at night, when his shadows were dark, stand far off to see her? Mad? Yes. Are many of us mad in this way? Poor Deb! Poor Deb! He said, soothingly.

It is here, she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. I took it. I did it. Me! Me! Not her! I shall be hanged. I shall be burnt in hell, if anybody knows I took it.

it? Out of his pocket as he leaned against bricks? Her nose? She thrust it into his hand, and then her errand done began to gather chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs. "'Has it come to this?' That was all he said. The Welsh wolf blood was honest. The roll was a small green pocket-book, containing one or two gold pieces, and a check for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it down, hiding his face again in his hands. "'Cue, don't be angry would me. It's only, poor Deb! Horneau's! He took the long, skinny

fingers kindly in his. Angry? God help me know. Let me sleep. I am tired!' He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him. It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God God's truth when I say he had then no thought of keeping the money. Deborah had hid it in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly as he took it out. I must give it to him, he said, reading her face.

"'Hore knows,' she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. "'But it is hor right to keep it?' "'His right,' the word struck him. Dr. May had used the same. He washed himself and went out to find this man Mitchell. right? Why did this chant's word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils whisper in his ear as he went slowly down the darkening street? End of Part 2. Part 3 of Life in the Iron Mills. This Librevox recording is in the

public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Clette. Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis. Part 3 The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly, from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the great temptation of his life came to him, veiled by no sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold.

bold blow for victory. He did not deceive himself. Thiefed—that was it. At first the word sickened him. Then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells tolling passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on within. This money!

He took it out and looked at it. If he gave it back, what then? He was going to be cool about it. People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them quietly at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they would not have gone by so quietly—mad with hunger, stretching out his hands to the world that had given so much to them, for leave to live the life God had meant him to live.

His soul within him was smothering to death. He wanted so much, thought so much, and knew nothing. There was nothing of which he was certain, except the mill. and things there. Of God and Heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what fairyland is to a child—something real, but not here—very far off. His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers, questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night. Was it not his right to live as they—a pure life, a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty and kind words. He only wanted to know how to use the strength

within him. His heart warmed as he thought of it. He suffered himself to think of it longer, if he took the money. Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night crept on as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of other thoughts, and stood triumphant. He looked at it, as he might be. What wonder if it blinded him to delirium, the madness that underlies all revolution, all progress, and all fall? You laugh at the shallow temptation. You see the air underlying its argument so clearly, that to him a true life was one of full development rather than self-restraint, that he was deaf to the higher tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for tooth's sake than in the fullest flow of spontaneous harmony?

I do not plead his cause. I only want to show you the moat in my brother's eye. Then you can see clearly to take it out. The money. There it lay on his knee. A little blotted slip of paper. Nothing in itself. Used to raise him out of the pit, something straight from God's hand.

A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his forehead. said. God made this money, the fresh air, too, for his children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had a kindly face he knew, loved his children alike.

Oh, he knew that! There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this, of an infinite depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere. Somewhere a depth of quiet and rest and love. Looking up now it became strangely real. The sun had sunk quite below the hills, but his last ray struck upward, touching the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in its thick gray damp. But overhead the sun touched smoke-clouds opened like a cleft ocean, shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of billowy silver-veined

with blood scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light. Wolf's artist eye grew drunk with colour, the gates of that other world, fading, flashing before him now. What in that world of beauty, content, and right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine of mill-owners and mill-hands? A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man, he thought, stretching out his hands, free to work, to live, to love, free, his right. He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation,

lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and endless as the cloud sees of color. Clutching it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go. Need never go again, thank God! Shaking off the thought with unspeakable loathing. Shall I go over the history of the hours that night? How the man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a half-consciousness of bidding them farewell. Lanes and alleys and backyards where the mill-hands lodged, noting, with a new eagerness, the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and under all a new vague dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there. It left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his life he entered

a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light lost itself in far retreating arches, built to meet the requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the still marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain. Wolf forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened a It was clear, feeling, full, strong.

An old man who had lived much, suffered much, whose brain was keenly alive, dominant, whose heart was summer warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held up humanity in its grand total, showed the great world cancer to his people. Who could show it better? He was a Christian reformer. He had studied the age thoroughly. His outlook at men had been free, worldwide, over all time.

His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages. His fiery zeal guided vast schemes by which the gospel was to be preached to all nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he painted Jesus, the incarnate life, love, the universal man. Words that became reality in the lives of these people, that lived again in beautiful words and actions, trifling, but heroic. sin, as he defined it, was a real foe to them. Their trials, temptations, were his. His words passed far over the furnace-tenders' grasp, toned to suit another class of culture. They sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world cancer with a steady eye that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor strychnine whiskey

had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler, he had failed. Eighteen centuries ago, the master of this man tried reform in the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not fail. His disciple, showing him to-night to cultured heers, showing the clearness of the God-power acting through him, shrank back from one coarse fact, that in birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people, his flesh, their flesh, their blood, his blood, tempted like them to brutalize day by day. to lie, to steal, the actual slime and want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone. Yet is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before his father and their father, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay his head, wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not that hungry mill-boy, at least in the back seat, have known the man. That Jesus did not stand there. Wolf froze at last

and turned from the church down the street. He looked up. The night had come on foggy, damp. The golden mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial day of this man's life was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting circumstance, a quicker walking over the path, that was all. Do you want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of it? Why, and the police reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies,

hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas, hints that here a power was lost to heaven, that there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the hints are, jocose sometimes, done up in. rhyme. Dr. May, a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to his wife at breakfast from the fourth column of the morning paper, an unusual thing, these police reports not being in general choice reading for ladies, but it was only one item he read.

Oh, my dear. You remember the man I told you of that we saw at Kirby's Mill that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is. Just listen. Circuit Court, Judge Day, Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby and John's Loudon Mill. Hills, charge grand larceny. Sentence. Nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! serves him right, after all our kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket

at the very time! His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people, and then they began to talk of something else. Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge Day to utter! Nineteen years. Half a lifetime. Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles were ironed, not usual in such cases, but he had made two desperate efforts to escape. Well, as Haley, the jailer said, small blame to him. Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look forward to. Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolf had fought him savagely. When he first was caught, the jailer's

said afterwards, and telling the story. Before the trial the fellow was cut down at once, laid there on that pallet like a dead man with his hands over his eyes. Never saw a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever had, would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him one, of course. Gibson, it was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy, but it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight. Money found on him. T'was a hard sentence. All the law allows. But it was, for example's sake. These mill-hands are getting unbearable. When the sentence was read, he just looked up and said the money was his by rights, and

that all the world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him here, name of Mitchell, him as he stole from, talked to him for an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought Wolf was remarkable quiet and went into his cell. Found him very low, bed all bloody. Doctor said he'd been bleeding at the lungs. He was as weak as a cat.

Yet if you'll believe me, he tried to get it past me and get out. I just carried him like a baby and threw him on the pallet. Three days after he tried it again. That time reached the wall. Lord help you, he fought like a tiger, gives him terrible blows! Fighting for life, you see. For he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib down yonder. Got a death cough now.

Took two of us to bring him down that day. So I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits in there. Going to-morrow with a batch more of him. That woman, hunch-back. tried with him, you remember? She's only got three years. Accomplice. But she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons. Give up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-looking. It acts different on him, being sentenced. Most of them gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays

is awful and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That woman now, she's desperate, been begging to see Hugh, as she calls him, for three days. I'm going to let her in. She don't go with him. Here she is in this next cell. I'm a man. I'm not going to now to let her in." He let her in. Wolf did not see her. She crept into a corner of the cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with

an idle, uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do. "'Tron to get out, old boy,' laughed Haley. "' Them irons will need a crowbar beside your tin before you can open him.' Wolf laughed, too, in a senseless way. "'I think I'll get out.' he said. "'I believe his brains touched,' said Haley, when he came out. The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour.

Still Deborah did not speak. At last she ventured nearer and touched his arm. "'Bloat?' she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder. He looked up at her. "'Poy, Deb!' he said, smiling, such a bright, boyish smile, that it went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she sobbed and cried out loud. Oh, Hugh, lad, Hugh, don't not look at me when it wore my fault, to think I brought her to it, and I loved her so. Oh, lad I did!"

The confession, even in this wretch, came with the woman's blush through the sharp cry. He did not seem to hear her, scraping away diligently at the bars with a bit of tin. Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw there made her draw suddenly back, something which Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial, or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. The gray shadow—yes, she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption.

That meant death, distant, lingering. This—whatever it was the woman saw or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught his shoulders and looked keenly, steadily into his eyes. "'Hugh!' she cried in a desperate whisper. "'Oh, boy, not that! For God's sake! Not that?' The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered word or two that

drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough. Sitting there in his palate she cried silently a hopeless sort of tears, but did not speak again. The man looked furtively at her now and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting. It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long

line where they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and black shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow the sound, more than anything else had done, wakened him up, made the whole real to him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How they crowded and pushed! And he—he should never walk that pavement again. There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill,

with a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Neff was married the other week. He whistled, hoping he would look up, but he did not. He wondered if Neff remembered he was there, If any of the boys thought of him up there, and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder road again. Never again. He had not quite understood it before, but now he did. Not for days or years, but never. That was it. How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market, and how like a picture it was,

the dark green heaps of corn, the crimson beets and golden melons. There was another with game. how the light flickered on that pheasant's breast with the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers. He could see the red shining of the drops. It was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step, so easy as it seemed so natural to go. Yet it could never be. Not in all the thousands of years to come that he should put his foot on that street again. He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of someone else. There was a dog down in the market walking after his master with such a stately grave look. Only a dog, yet he could go backwards and forwards just

as he pleased. He had good luck. While the very vilest cur yelping there in the gutter had not lived his life, had been free to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain, while he—' No, he would not think of that. He tried to put the thought away, and to listen to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat. But it would come back. He—what had he done to bear this. Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul and body had become

corrupt and rotten. How when he came out, if he lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him, how his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head with a puzzled, weary look. It ached his head with thinking. He tried to quiet himself. It was only right, perhaps, he had done wrong. But was there right or wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold, quiet crept through his brain. It was all wrong. But let it be.

It was nothing to him more than the others. Let it be. The door grated as Haley opened it. "'Come, my woman, must luck up for the night. Come, stir yourself!' She went up and took Hugh's hand. "'Good-night, Deb,' he said carelessly. She had not hoped he would say more, but the tired pain on her mouth just then was bitterer than death.

She took his passive hand and kissed it. "'Hor'll never see Deb again?' she ventured, her lips growing colder and more bloodless. "'What did she say that for? Did he not know it?' Yet he would not be impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he. "'No, never again,' he said, trying to be cheerful. She stood just a moment looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing there with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face,

and the great despised love tugging at her heart? "'Come you!' said Haley impatiently. She did not move. "'Hugh!' she whispered. It was to be her last word. What was it? Hugh, boy, not that! He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent,

looking in his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly. It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hearted any more. Her nose, she said, humbly. Tell my father good-bye, and— And kiss little Janie? she nodded saying nothing looked in his face again and went out of the door as she went she staggered drinking to-day broke out haley pushing her before him where the devil did you get it here in with you and he shoved her into her cell next to wolves and shut the door

Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor, through which she could see the light from wolves. She had discovered it days before. She hurried in now and, kneeling down by it, listened, hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut coral with. He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now. A tall mulatto girl following her mistress, her basket on her head, crossed the street just below and looked up. She was laughing, but when she caught sight of the haggard face, peering out through the bars, suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes, and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flower. hours, under which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would try to-morrow and cut one like it.

Tomorrow. He threw down the tin, trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again the daylight was gone. Deborah, crouching nearby on the other side of the wall, heard no noise. He sat on the side of the low palate, thinking. Whatever was the mystery which he was the mystery which he was the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly, in the dark there, and became fixed, a something never seen on his face before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an hour.

The rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent. He listened to each as it passed, because he thought it was to be for the last time. For the same reason it was, I suppose, that he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were, what kinds of homes they were going to, if they had children, listening eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if—God be merciful to the man, what strange fancy was this, as if he should never hear human voices again. It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last passenger, he thought, was gone. No, there was a quick step. Joe Hill, lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap, never passed a fellow

without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he lived with his wife. Granny Hill, the boys called her. Bed-ridden she was, but so kind as Joe was to her, kept the room so clean. And the old woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of Tlad's foolishness. The step was far down the street, but he could see him place the ladder, run up and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once more. Joe, he called out of the grating. Goodbye, Joe! The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly.

Then hurried on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again, louder, but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing, but it hurt him, this disappointment. Goodbye, Joe, he called, sorrowfully enough. Be quiet, said one of the jail. "'Passing the door, striking on it with his club. "'Oh, that was the last, was it?' "'There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face,

"'as he lay down on the bed, taking the bit of tin, "'which he had rafts to a tolerable degree of sharpness, in his hand, "'to play with, it may be. "'He bared his arms, looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. "'Debra, listening in the next cell, "'heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. "'She shut her lips tightly that she might not scream, the cold drops of sweat broke over her in her dumb agony.

Hornos bust, she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards where she lay. If she could have seen Wolf, there was nothing about him to frighten her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before. I think that all the low, vile life, all his whole—all his own life—all his own time—he was his wrongs, all his starved hopes came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn face now and then to the pure light that seemed so far off as one that said, How long, O Lord! How long?

The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path, slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He watched it steadily as it creptly. up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there always in the mills. The years had been so fierce and cruel. There was coming now quiet, and coolness, and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was not. He was conscious only of deep steel. stillness creeping over him. At first he saw a sea of faces, the millmen, women he had known,

drunken and bloated, Janie's timid and pitiful poor old Debs, then they floated together like a mist and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly moonlight. Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought with it calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with God in judgment. A voice may have spoken to him. for it from far off Calvary. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Who dare say? Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell. Slower and slower the moon floated from behind a cloud, until when at last its full tide of white splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper stillness the dead figure that never

should move again. Silence deeper than the night. Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of blood, dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor. There was outcry and crowd enough from the cell the next day. The coroner and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed into the corners, coming and going all day. Only one woman. She came late and outstayed them all.

A Quaker, or friend as they call themselves. I think this woman was known by that name in heaven. A homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah, for Haley had let her in, took notice of her. She watched them all, sitting on the end of the palate, holding his head in her arms, with the ferocity of a watchdog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no sorrow in her face, the stuff out of which murderers are made instead. All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face. Of all the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face. all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to her, only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they were all gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over the dead face. Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.

"'Did Hor know my boy would like it? Did Hor know Hugh?' i know hugh now the white fingers passed in a slow pitiful way over the dead worn face there was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes did hore know will they bury hugh said deborah in a shrill tone catching her arm this had been the question hanging on her lips all day into town-yard under to mud and ash to ladle smother woman who were born into lanemore where to air is frickin strong take her out for god's sake take her out where the air blows the quaker hesitated but only for a moment she put her strong arm around deborah and led her to the window they sees the hill friend over the river they sees how the light lies warm there and the winds of god blow all the day i live there Where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me. She turned Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest. "'Thee will believe me.

I will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow.' Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on she leaned against the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick, sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow of their solemn repose fell on her face, Its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble quiet.

Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes. The poor, weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and touched her arm. "'When thee comes back,' she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity. "'Thee shall begin thy life again.

There on the hills. I came too late, but not for thee. By God's help it may be.' Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my story here. At evening time it was light. There is no need to tire you with the long years of sunshine and fresh air,

and slow, patient Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and soul. There is a homely pine-house on one of these hills, whose windows overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows, niched into the very place where the light is warmest, the air-freeest. It is the friend's meeting-house. Once a week they sit there in their grave, earnest way, waiting for the spirit of love to speak, opening their simple hearts to receive his words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who takes a humble place among them, waiting like them. In her grey dress, her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky.

A woman much loved by these silent, restful people, more silent than they, more humble, more loving. Waiting, with her eyes turned to hills higher and pure than these on which she lives, dim and far off now, but to be reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet there the love denied her here, that she shall find him whom she lost, and that then she will not be all unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the other, something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not, a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau does. deprived of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make

the hills of heaven more fair? Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this figure of the mill-woman cut in coral. I have it here in the corner of my library. I keep it hid behind a curtain. It is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline that show a master's hand. Sometimes, to-night, for instance, the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine,

a wan, woeful face, through which the spirit of the dead coral-cutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a tail, terrible question. Is this the end, they say? Nothing beyond, no more. Why, you tell me you have seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes, horses dying under the lash. I know. The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gaslight wakens from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through the room, only faintly, though, for they belong to the open

sunlight. As I glance at them they recall each some task or pleasure of the coming day, a half-moulded child's head, Aphrodite, a bow of forest leaves, music, work, homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal truth and beauty, prophetic all. Only this dumb, woeful face seems to belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it. Has the power of its desperate need commanded the darkness away. While the room is yet steeped in heavy shadow, a cool gray light suddenly touches its head like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken cloud to the far east, where in the flickering nebulous crimson God has set the promise of the dawn. End of Part 3. End of Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding

Davis.