To return for a moment to the Huns. Maude had expressed a desire to see a mill, and we went, one afternoon, in Mr. Scherer's carriage to Steelville, with Mr. Scherer himself,--a bewildering, educative, almost terrifying experience amidst fumes and flames, gigantic forces and titanic weights. It seemed a marvel that we escaped being crushed or burned alive in those huge steel buildings reverberating with sound. They appeared a very bedlam of chaos, instead of the triumph of order, organization and human skill. Mr. Scherer was very proud of it all, and ours was a sort of triumphal procession, accompanied by superintendents, managers and other factotums. I thought of my childhood image of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and our progress through the flames seemed no less remarkable and miraculous. Maude, with alarm in her eyes, kept very close to me, as I supplemented the explanations they gave her. I had been there many times before. "Why, Hugh," she exclaimed, "you seem to know a lot about it!" Mr. Scherer laughed. "He's had to talk about it once or twice in court--eh, Hugh? You didn't realize how clever your husband was did you, Mrs. Paret?" "But this is so--complicated," she replied. "It is overwhelming." "When I found out how much trouble he had taken to learn about my business," added Mr. Scherer, "there was only one thing to do. Make him my lawyer. Hugh, you have the floor, and explain the open-hearth process." I had almost forgotten the Huns. I saw Maude gazing at them with a new kind of terror. And when we sat at home that evening they still haunted her. "Somehow, I can't bear to think about them," she said. "I'm sure we'll have to pay for it, some day." "Pay for what?" I asked. "For making them work that way. And twelve hours! It can't be right, while we have so much, and are so comfortable." "Don't be foolish," I exclaimed. "They're used to it. They think themselves lucky to get the work--and they are. Besides, you give them credit for a sensitiveness that they don't possess. They wouldn't know what to do with such a house as this if they had it." "I never realized before that our happiness and comfort were built on such foundations;" she said, ignoring my remark. "You must have seen your father's operatives, in Elkington, many times a week."