Michael took great pleasure in going down to look at the house, and watching the progress that was made with it, as indeed the whole colony did. They called it “The Boss’s Cottage,” and when they laid off work at night always took a trip to see what had been done during the day, men, women and children. It was a sort of sacred pilgrimage, wherein they saw their own highest dreams coming true for the man they loved because he had helped them to a future of possibilities. Not a man of them but wistfully wondered if he would ever get to the place where he could build him a house like that, and resolved secretly to try for it; and always the work went better the next day for the visit to the shrine. But after all, Michael would turn from his house with an empty ache in his heart. What was it for? Not for him. It was not likely he would ever spend happy hours there. He was not like other men. He must take his happiness in making others happy. But one day a new thought came to him, as he watched the laborers working out the plan, and bringing it ever nearer and nearer to the perfect whole. A great desire came to him to have Starr see it some day, to know what she would think about it, and if she would like it. The thought occurred to him that perhaps, some time, in the changing of the world, she might chance near that way, and he have opportunity to show her the house that he had built—for her! Not that he would ever tell her that last. She must never know of course that she was the only one in all the world he could ever care for. That would seem a great presumption in her eyes. He must keep that to himself. But there would be no harm in showing her the house, and he would make it now as beautiful as if she were to occupy it. He would take his joy in making all things fair, with the hope that she might one day see and approve it. So, as the work drew near its completion he watched it more and more carefully, matching tints in rooms, and always bringing down some new idea, or finding some particular bit of furniture that would some day fit into a certain niche. In that way he cheated the lonely ache in his heart, and made believe he was happy. And another winter drew its white mantle about its shoulders and prepared to face the blast. It bade fair to be a bitter winter for the poor, for everything was high, and unskilled labor was poorly paid. Sickness and death were abroad, and lurked in the milk supply, the food supply, the unsanitary tenements about the alley; which, because it had not been so bad as some other districts had been left uncondemned. Yet it was bad enough, and Michael’s hands were full to keep his people alive, and try to keep some of them from sinning. For always where there is misery, there is the more sinning.