“Perhaps not. One fool makes many. Think well, Marsten, which side you are going to be with in this fight. I left a Union, and although I was older than you are at the time, I never repented it. It kept me out of employment, but not for long, and they kept me out of it in the very business of which I am now manager. The Union is founded on principles that won’t do, you know. Any scheme that tends to give a poor workman the same wages as a good workman is all wrong.” “I don’t agree with you, Mr. Sartwell. The only hope for the workingman is in combination. Of course we make mistakes and are led away by demagogues, but some day there will be a strike led by an individual Napoleon, and then we will settle things once for all, as you said a while ago.” Sartwell laughed, and held out his hand. “Oh, that’s your ambition is it? Well, good luck attend you, my young Napoleon. I should have chosen Wellington, if I had been you. Good-night. I am waiting for my daughter, to whom I foolishly gave permission to call for me here in a cab.” Marsten held the hand extended to him so long that the manager looked at him in astonishment. The colour had mounted from the young man’s cheeks to his brow and his eyes were on the floor. “Mr. Sartwell,” he said, with an effort, “I came tonight to speak with you about your daughter and not about the strike.” The manager dropped his hand as if it had been red-hot, and stepped back two paces. “About my daughter?” he cried, sternly. “What do you mean?” Marsten had to moisten his lips once or twice before he could reply. His released hand opened and shut nervously. “I mean,” he said, “that I am in love with her.” The manager sat down in the office chair beside his table. All the former friendliness had left his face, and his dark brows lowered over his keen eyes, into which their usual cold glitter had returned. “What folly is this?” he cried, with rising anger. “You are a boy, and from the gutter at that, for all I know. My daughter is but a child yet; she is only----” He paused. He had been about to say seventeen when it occurred to him that he had married her mother when she was but a year older. Marsten’s colour became a deeper red when the manager spoke so contemptuously of the gutter. He said slowly, and with a certain doggedness in his tone: “It is no reproach to come from the gutter--the reproach is in staying there. I have left it, and I don’t intend to return.” “Oh, ‘intend’!” cried the manager, impatiently. “We all know what is paved with intentions. Why; you have never even spoken to the girl!” “No, but I mean to.” “Do you? Well, I shall take very good care that you do not.” “What have you against me, Mr. Sartwell?” “What is there for you? Perhaps you will kindly specify your recommendations.”