"You say the suffering away over there in France was real to you," he continued. "Well, less than a mile from this spot, I called this afternoon on a man who is dying by inches of consumption, contracted while working in our office. For eight years he was absent from his desk scarcely a day. The force nicknamed him 'Old Faithful.' When he dropped in his tracks at last they carried him out and stopped his pay. He has no care--nothing to eat, even, except the help that the Martins give him. Another case: A widow and four helpless children--the man was killed in McIver's factory last week. He died in agony too horrible to describe. The mother is prostrated, the children are hungry. God knows what will become of them this next winter. Another: A workman who was terribly burned in the Mill two years ago. He is blind and crippled in the bargain--" She interrupted him with a protesting cry, "John, John, for pity's sake, stop!" "Well, why are not these things right here at home as real to you as you say the same things were when they happened in France?" he demanded. She did not attempt to answer his question but instead asked, gently, "Is that why you have been going to the Flats with Mary?" If he noticed any special significance in her words he ignored it. "Mary visits the people in the Flats as her mother did--as our mother used to do. She told me about some of the cases, and I have been going with her now and then to see for myself--that is all." Then they left the old house and drove back to their pretentious home on the hill, where Adam Ward suffered his days of mental torture and was racked by his nightly dreams of hell. And the dread shadow of that hidden thing was over them all. * * * * * That night when John told the Interpreter of his afternoon with his sister the old basket maker listened silently. His face was turned toward the scene that, save for the twinkling lights, lay wrapped in darkness before them. And he seemed to be listening to the voice of the Mill. When John had finished, the man in the wheel chair said very little. But when John was leaving, the Interpreter asked, as an afterthought, "And where was Captain Charlie this afternoon, John?" "At the Mill," John answered. "I'm glad he wasn't at home, too; it was bad enough as it was." "Perhaps it was just as well," said the old basket maker. And John Ward, in the darkness, could not see that the Interpreter was smiling. CHAPTER XVI HER OWN PEOPLE "A lady to see you, sir." John did not take his eyes from the work on his desk. "All right, Jimmy, show her in." The general manager read on to the bottom of the typewritten page, signed his name to the sheet, placed it in the proper basket and turned in his chair. "Helen!" Little Maggie's princess lady was so lovely that afternoon, as she stood there framed in the doorway of the manager's office that even her brother noticed.