“They travel in long columns, millions and millions of them. And when they come to a ditch, the front ones fall in, and more and more of them on top, till they fill up the ditch, and the rest cross over. We are ants, Mary.” “No matter how many go in,” cried the girl, “none will ever get across. There’s no bottom to the ditch!” He answered: “That’s more than any ant can know. Mary. All they know is to go in. They cling to each other’s bodies, even in death; they make a bridge, and the rest go over.” “I’ll step one side!” she declared, fiercely. “I’ll not throw meself away.” “You may step one side,” answered the other--“but you’ll step back into line again. I know you better than you know yourself, Mary.” There was silence in the little cabin. The winds of an early fall shrilled outside, and life suddenly seemed to Hal a stern and merciless thing. He had thought in his youthful fervour it would be thrilling to be a revolutionist; but to be an ant, one of millions and millions, to perish in a bottomless ditch--that was something a man could hardly bring himself to face! He looked at the bowed figure of this white haired toiler, vague in the feeble lamplight, and found himself thinking of Rembrandt’s painting, the Visit of Emmaus: the ill-lighted room in the dirty tavern, and the two ragged men, struck dumb by the glow of light about the forehead of their table-companion. It was not fantastic to imagine a glow of light about the forehead of this soft-voiced old man! “I never had any hope it would come in my time,” the old man was saying gently. “I did use to hope my boys might see it--but now I’m not sure even of that. But in all my life I never doubted that some day the working-people will cross over to the promised land. They’ll no longer be slaves, and what they make won’t be wasted by idlers. And take it from one who knows, Mary--for a workingman or woman not to have that faith, is to have lost the reason for living.” Hal decided that it would be safe to trust this man, and told him of his check-weighman plan. “We only want your advice,” he explained, remembering Mary’s warning. “Your sick wife--” But the old man answered, sadly, “She’s almost gone, and I’ll soon be following. What little strength I have left might as well be used for the cause.” SECTION 5. This business of conspiracy was grimly real to men whose living came out of coal; but Hal, even at the most serious moments, continued to find in it the thrill of romance. He had read stories of revolutionists, and of the police who hunted them. That such excitements were to be had in Russia, he knew; but if any one had told him they could be had in his own free America, within a few hours’ journey of his home city and his college-town, he could not have credited the statement. The evening after his visit to Edstrom, Hal was stopped on the street by his boss. Encountering him suddenly, Hal started, like a pick-pocket who runs into a policeman. “Hello, kid,” said the pit-boss.