The piteous exhibition ended as usual. As if driven by some invisible fiend, the man rushed from the presence of those whom he most loved to the dreadful company of his own fearful and monstrous thoughts. And the room where the wife and children of Adam Ward sat was filled with the presence of that hidden thing of which they dared not speak. * * * * * Everywhere throughout the city the people were discussing John Ward's opposition to McIver. The community, tense with feeling, waited for an answer to the vital question, What would the Mill workers' union do? Upon the answer of John Ward's employees to the demands of the agitator for a sympathetic strike depended the success or failure of Jake Vodell's Millsburgh campaign. CHAPTER XIX ADAM WARD'S WORK It was evening. The Interpreter was sitting in his wheel chair on the balcony porch with silent Billy not far away. Beyond the hills on the west the sky was faintly glowing in the last of the sun's light. The Flats were deep in gloomy shadows out of which the grim stacks of the Mill rose toward the smoky darkness of their overhanging cloud. Here and there among the poor homes of the workers a lighted window or a lonely street lamp shone in the murky dusk. But the lights of the business section of the city gleamed and sparkled like clusters and strings of jewels, while the residence districts on the hillside were marked by hundreds of twinkling, starlike points. The quiet was rudely broken by a voice at the outer doorway of the hut. The tone was that of boisterous familiarity. "Hello! hello there! Anybody home?" "Here," answered the Interpreter. "Come in. Or, I should say, come out," he added, as his visitor found his way through the darkness of the living room. "A night like this is altogether too fine to spend under a roof." "Why in thunder don't you have a light?" said the visitor, with a loud freedom carefully calculated to give the effect of old and privileged comradeship. But the laugh of hearty good fellowship which followed his next remark was a trifle overdone "Ain't afraid of bombs, are you? Don't you know that the war is over yet?" The Interpreter obligingly laughed at the merry witticism, as he answered, "There is light enough out here under the stars to think by. How are you, Adam Ward?" From where he stood in the doorway, Adam could see the dim figure of the Interpreter's companion at the farther end of the porch. "Who is that with you?" demanded the Mill owner suspiciously. "Only Billy Rand," replied the man in the wheel chair reassuringly. "Won't you sit down?"