McCormack, on the other hand, was still peace-loving, and more of a humanitarian than ever. He had always been a student and a dreamer, and the more he read and pondered, the more he saw of actual social conditions, the more thoroughly convinced he became that the salvation of humanity for the future lay in that leveling process by which the workers and the poor should be lifted to a higher social and economic plane, and the millionaires and aristocrats brought down to approximately the same level. Perhaps he was a socialist, he did not quite know. At any rate, he was not a radical. He believed in a democratic form of government, operated by virtue of its laws, and that its laws should be enforced, even though it became necessary to use its military arm in order to do so. During the last two years he had seen much of Hugo Donatello. They had, on many occasions, discussed with each other the economic problems confronting the country and the world. But they could not quite reach a common ground. As time passed Donatello, who had become practically the leader of a group of organized radicals in the city, grew more and more extreme in his views, and through the medium of his journal, _The Disinherited_, advocated, every week, such direct action as would make the “workers of the world,” without further delay, the masters of its wealth and pleasures. Quiet in manner, dreamy-eyed, soft-voiced except when aroused, persuasive in argument and eloquent in appeal, he exerted an influence over Hal the true extent of which the boy did not realize. The ideas of the young radical were so big, his humanitarian instincts apparently so strong, his theory of internationalism, as opposed to nationalism, leading to the ultimate and glorious brotherhood of all men, was so pleasingly and convincingly put, that it was difficult for this bank clerk, unschooled in the art of logic, to detect the fallacies with which the argument abounded. Yet the boy was not swept off his feet. By reason both of his ancestry and his education he was firmly grounded in the principle of patriotism, and he was not easily moved. His mind was receptive, it was not thoroughly convinced. But his friendship with Donatello and his association with other social radicals in the city were commented on unfavorably in many quarters. When the matter reached the ears of his aunt, Miss Sarah Halpert, she brought him up with a round turn. “What business have you, anyway,” she asked him, “to be associating with that ordinary class of people? They’re not your kind. What have you in common with them, I should like to know?” “Well,” replied Hal, “they have hearts and brains and lungs and stomachs just as I have. They get hot and cold and hungry and thirsty just as I do. And whatever pleasant things there are in life they are just as well fitted as I am to enjoy them. It seems to me that we have a good deal in common.”