These familiar doctrines seemed to excite the applause usual among hearers of this sort. There was a chorus of approval, so that their orator went on, much inspired. "People in Gallatin offered a thousand dollars for one man catched putting matches in a threshing machine. Other ranchers was willing to give a thousand if they found out what made their hay get a-fire! Hah! They don't know how we set a bomb so the sun'll start it! They don't think that the very fellers running the threshing machine is the ones that drops the matches in! They don't think that the man running the mowing machine is the one that fixes the sickle bar! They don't think that the man in charge of this here road gang is the one that's a-doctoring trees! "They're still eating all sorts of things for bread now," he resumed. "Folks in the cities pays more and more. Wheat'll go to four dollars before we're through. We're the farmer's friends, huh? Hay'll be worth fifty dollars a ton in this valley before we're through--but there won't be no horses left to haul it to town! There's thousands of right boes all across the country now. If fourteen thousand iron and steel people was out at one time in Cleveland, what couldn't we do, if we once got a good strike started all across the country, now the war is done? We've made 'em raise wages time and again, haven't we? I tell you, freedom's coming to its own." Cleveland! Mary Warren pricked up her ears. She had reason; for now the voice went on, mentioning a name which Annie Squires had made familiar--Dorenwald, Charlie Dorenwald, the foreman in the rolling rooms! "Charlie Dorenwald's the head of that bunch. He's a good man. You know what he pulled in Youngstown." "Well, I don't know," said one voice, "they lynched a man in Illinois. America's getting lawless! Think about lynching people! It ain't right!" "There's nothing they won't do," said Big Aleck's voice, virtuously. "They ask us we shall have respect for a Government that lets people lynch folks!" "You didn't see any one when you was down in the road, Aleck?" asked some one again, uneasily. "I told you, no. Well, we got to get to work." Mary Warren heard them rising from their places. Footfalls passed here and there, shuffling. The woman could not repress her shuddering. This was Force--unrestrained, ignorant, unleashed, brute Force, that same aftermath Force which was rending apart the world back of the new-dried battlefields of Europe! Order and law, comfort, love, affection, trust--all these things were gone! What then was her footing here--a woman? Was God indeed asleep? She heard her own soul begging for alleviating death. Then came silence, except for the airs high up in the sobbing trees. They were gone on their errand. After that,--what? After a time she heard a sound of dread--the sliddering of a footfall in the sand. She recognized the heavy, dragging stride of the man who had brought her here. He had come back--alone.