Soon after this the mother became ailing and fretted at being left alone of evenings, so I often stayed with her while Barbara danced at some neighbor's house or public assembly with the new-comer. I never had a thought of jealousy, not even when the fellows in the shop began chaffing me for letting my sweetheart run about with another man, for I trusted Barbara, and was not he my friend? Unlike as we were, had he not singled me out from all the others, and made me his confidant and companion on all occasions? Even after I had left the shop, having at last secured the position as book-keeper at the ---- Mills which I had for years been working for, he kept up the former intimacy, and often I found him waiting for me when I returned late from my work, and I liked nothing so well as to sit and smoke, and listen to him and Barbara, their singing, and laughter, and foolish talk. It went on so for a good while. I was beginning to lay by money, and the time for our marriage was not far off. But a strike broke out just then among the spinners. I had known it was coming, and done what I could to prevent it, knowing what the result would be, but it was all in vain. Their wrongs were too real and of too long standing. The crisis came; the mills were closed; for a few days the strikers believed they would win the day. At the end of a week the mills opened with a new set of operatives hired from a neighboring town. Riots and bloodshed followed. Those were troublous times. I could not keep my hand from giving aid to the suffering wives and children of men I had lived among all my life. I took no thought for consequences. One day I received my discharge. I was dazed by the cruel blow; I went about like a man walking in his sleep.