On Sunday morning the sun was shining, and never had Bunny seen such crowds in Paradise. Eli was holding a service in the grove alongside his new “tabernacle,” and was telling the strikers that if only they would have faith in the Holy Spirit, they need not worry about their wages, there was the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and was not their Heavenly Father able to feed them if they would trust him? Some believed this, and shouted “Amen”; others jeered, and went off to the playground at the school-house, where the union was holding a meeting for those who believed that wages were necessary. Bunny went there, and heard Paul make his first speech. It was a great sensation to Bunny, and in fact, to the whole town; a picturesque situation, you must admit—the two Watkins boys, the rival prodigies of the neighborhood, making speeches at the same time, and preaching somewhat opposite doctrines! It must be said on behalf of Eli that he did not deliberately oppose the strike, and probably never clearly understood how his doctrine was likely to aid the Employers’ Federation. His sisters were baking bread for the strikers, working hard with their physical hands kneading physical dough—and all the while Eli was proclaiming that he could make magical miraculous bread, whole baskets of it, by the agency of prayer. Why didn’t he do it, jeered the skeptics; and Eli answered that it was because of their lack of faith. But they said it was up to him to begin; and the production of one single loaf of bread by the Bible method would multiply faith a million-fold, and bring the whole organized labor movement into the Church of the Third Revelation! Paul had a deep, mature voice, and a slow, impressive way of speaking. He was a good orator, for the very reason that he knew none of the tricks, but was entirely wrapped up in what he had to say. There was a struggle impending over the issue of the re-opening of the wells, and Paul had been consulting lawyers, and told the strikers exactly what they had a right to do, and what they must refrain from doing. They would maintain their legal rights, but not weaken their case by committing the least breach of the law, and giving their enemies a chance to put them in the wrong. Their whole future was at stake, and the future of their wives and children; if they could win the three-shift day, they would have leisure to study and think, and raise their own status, and keep their children longer in school. That was the real issue in this strike, and if democracy did not mean that, it had no meaning, and talk about patriotism was buncombe. The vast throng cheered Paul, and Bunny could hardly keep from cheering also, and went away feeling cheap, and utterly out of harmony with life. He had time to think it over on the long drive back to Beach City by himself; he did not get in until midnight, and all the way he heard Paul’s voice above the hum of the engine, challenging everything that Bunny thought he believed!