"So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!" Margret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at her. "Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on." They went out of the door. Margret stopped, looking back. "Did I call it a bit of hell? It 's only a glimpse of the under-life of America,--God help us!--where all men are born free and equal." The air in the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and shuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terrible pity for these people, came out of his soul now, writhing his face, and dulling his eyes. "And you," he said, savagely, "you sit by the road-side, with help in your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel with your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you,--because you are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is their loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when you want it? Tragedy! Come here,--let me hear what you call this." He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,--wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen. "You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,--what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,--you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herself to death,--a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead.--Is Hetty here?" The woman got up. "She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She's lookin' foine in her Sunday suit. Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say." She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,--her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a dirty plaid skirt, and stained velvet bodice,--her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,--the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margret leaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's dead neck. "How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young she is!--What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margret's lips move. "'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'" "Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her dead face. Is your loss like hers?" he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it. "Let me go," she said. "I am tired." He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly enough,--for the girl suffered, he saw. "What will you do?" he asked her then. "It is not too late,--will you help me save these people?" She wrung her hands helplessly.