It was pathetic, it was unforgettable, to see these people as they stood beside the rounded, supple, splendid figure of the speaker and took her strong, smooth hand in their work-scarred, leathery palms--these women of many children and never-ending work, bent by toil above the wash-tub and the churn, shut out from all things that humanize and make living something more than a brute struggle against hunger and cold. Ida greeted them smilingly, but her face was quivering with a sadness which she could hardly conceal. Bradley pushed on desperately toward her. At length, as the crowd began to thin out, he moved up and thrust his long arm in over the shoulders of the women. "Won't you shake hands with me, too?" he said, and his voice trembled. She turned quickly, and her face flashed into a smile--a smile different, somehow, from that with which she had greeted the others, and they saw it. It warmed his melancholy soul like a sudden ray of June sunlight. Her hand met his, strong and firm in its grasp. "Ah! Mr. Talcott, I'm glad to see you." The farmers' wives began to leave, saying good-by over and over again. They clung to the girl's hand, gazing at her with wistful eyes. It seemed as if they could not bear to let her go out of their lives again. "We may never see you again, dearie," one old woman said, "but we never'll forgit you. You've helped us. I reckon life won't seem quite so hard now. We kind o' see a glimmer of a way out." The tears were on her face, and Ida put her arms about the old lady's neck and kissed her, and then turned away, unable to speak. The chairman, followed by Bradley and Ida, made his way down the steps and out on the grounds, where the streams of people were setting back toward the city. The chairman placed Miss Wilbur in a carriage, and said, "I'll see you at the hotel." "Won't you ride?" she asked. "No, thank you," he replied, with a jovial gleam in his eyes, and Ida said no more in protest. Bradley, in great trepidation, took a seat beside her. "Well, Brother Talcott, what do you think of such a meeting as that?" she asked, after the carriage started, turning upon him with sudden intensity. "It was like that first meeting of the Grange, when I heard you speak first, only this is more earnest--more desperate, I should say." "Yes, these people _are_ desperate. It is impossible for the world to realize the earnestness of these farmers. Just see the interest the women-folks take in it! No other movement in history--not even the anti-slavery cause--appealed to the women like this movement here in Kansas. Why, sometimes I go home and walk the floor like a crazy woman--I get so wrought up over it. While our great politicians split hairs on the tariff, people starve. The time has come for rebellion." Bradley was silent. He sympathized with her feeling, but he could not see very much hope in a revolt.