With her, as with every one in Millsburgh, the strike was a topic of daily conversation. She sympathized with her brother in his anxiety. She was worried over the noticeable effect of the excitement upon her father. She was interested in McIver's talk of the situation. But in no vital way had her life been touched by the industrial trouble. In no way had she come in actual contact with it. The realities of the situation were to her vague, intangible, remote from her world, as indeed the Mill itself had been, before her visit with John that day. To her, the Interpreter was of all men set apart from the world. In his little hut on the cliff, with his books and his basket making, her gentle old friend's life, it seemed to her, held not one thing in common with the busy world that lay within sight of the balcony-porch. The thought that the industrial trouble could in any way touch him came to her with a distinct shock. "Surely," she protested, at last, "the strike cannot affect you. It has nothing to do with your work." "Every strike has to do with all work everywhere, child," returned the man in the wheel chair, while his busy fingers wove the fabric of a basket. "Every idle hand in the world, Helen, whatever the cause of its idleness, compels some other's hand to do its work. The work of the world must be done, child--somehow, by some one--the work of the world must be done. The little Maggies and Bobbies of the Flats down there must be fed, you know--and their mother too--yes, and Sam Whaley himself must be cared for. And so you see, because of the strike, Billy and I must work overtime." Certainly there was no hint of rebuke in the old basket maker's kindly voice, but the daughter of Adam Ward felt her cheeks flush with a quick sense of shame. That her old friend in the wheel chair should so accept the responsibility of his neighbor's need and give himself thus to help them, while she-- "Is there," she faltered, "is there really so much suffering among the strikers?" Without raising his eyes from his work, he answered, "The women and children--they are so helpless." "I--I did not realize," she murmured. "I did not know." "You were not ignorant of the helpless women and children who suffered in foreign lands," he returned. "Why should you not know of the mothers and babies in Millsburgh?" "But McIver says--" she hesitated.