When I left her, I went to see my old Drummer, and told him of the outrages which had been perpetrated on the poor woman. It was worth while seeing him. He was magnificent. As long as I was talking only of the man, he was merely acquiescent, uttering his "Ya, Ya," irresponsively over his beer; but when I told him of the woman and children, he was on his feet in an instant--"Tamming te strikers and all teir vorks." He seized his hat and big stick, and pouring out gutturals so fast that I could not pretend to follow him, ordered me to show him the place. As he strode through the streets, I could scarcely keep up with him. His stick rang on the frozen pavement like a challenge to battle. And when he reached the house he was immense. He was suddenly transformed. No mother could have been tenderer, no father more protecting. He gathered up the children in his great arms, and petted and soothed them; his tone, a little while before so ferocious, now as soft and gentle as the low velvet bass of his great drum. I always think of the Good Shepherd now as something like him that evening; rugged as a rock, gentle as a zephyr. He would have taken them all to his house and have adopted them if the woman would have let him. His heart was bigger than his house. He seemed to have filled all the place; to have made it a fortress. The strike had cast its black cloud over all the section, and not all of its victims were murdered by the mob. I fell in with the man who had spoken to me so cheerily one morning of the sun's shining for him. He looked haggard and ill and despairing. He was out of work and could find none. In our talk he did not justify the strike; but he bowed to it with resignation as a stricken Orestes might have bowed to the blows of Fate. His spirit was not then broken--it was only embittered. His furniture which was so nearly paid for had gone to the loan sharks; his house of which he boasted had reverted to the Building Company. He looked fully twenty years older than when I had seen him last. I offered him a small sum which he took gratefully. It was the first money he had had in weeks, he said, and the stores had stopped his credits. A few weeks later I saw him staggering along the street, his heart-eating sorrow drowned for an hour in the only nepenthe such poverty knows. XXXVII WOLFFERT'S NEIGHBORS