"You're away off, Tom!" was the answer, given with some heat. "I ain't missed a single committee meetin', an' I know just where Foley stands. It's the rest of us that're sorter peterin' out. Buck's the only one that's standin' out for not givin' in. Mebbe he's not above dumpin' us all if he had the chance. But he couldn't be crooked here even if he wanted to. We're too many watchin' him." All this Tom had said to himself before, but his saying it had not dispelled his suspicion, and no more did the saying of it now by Pete. The negotiations seemed all open and above board; he could not lay his finger on a single flaw in them. But yet the strike seemed to him to have been on too solid a basis to have thus collapsed without apparent cause. At the union meeting following the committee conference where Foley had yielded, a broken man, the advisability of abandoning the strike came up for discussion. Foley sat back in his chair, with overcast face, and refused to speak. But his words to the committee had gone round, and now his gloomy silence was more convincing in its discouragement than any speech could have been. Tom, whose mind could not give up the suspicion that there was trickery, even though he could not see it, had a despairing thought that if action could be staved off time might make the flaw apparent. He frantically opposed the desire of a portion of the members that the strike be given up that very evening. Their defeat was not difficult; the union was not yet ready for the step. It was decided that the matter should come up for a vote at the following meeting. While Tom was at breakfast the next morning there was a knock at the door. Maggie answered it, and he heard a thin yet resonant voice that he seemed to have heard before, inquire: "Is Mr. Keating in?" He stepped to the door. In the dim hallway he saw indistinctly a small, thin woman with a child in her arms. "Yes," he answered for himself. "Don't you remember me, Brother Keating?" she asked, with a glad note in her voice, shifting the child higher on her breast and holding out a hand. "Mrs. Petersen!" he cried. "Come right in." She entered, and Tom introduced her to Maggie, who drew a chair for her up beside the breakfast table. "Thank you, sister." She sank exhausted into the chair, and turned immediately on Tom. "Have you seen Nels lately?" she asked eagerly. "Not for more than two weeks." The excitement died out of her face; Tom now saw, by the light of the gas that had to be burned in the dining-room even at midday, that the face was drawn and that there were dark rings under the eyes. "Is anything wrong?" he asked. "He ain't been home for two nights," she returned tremulously. "I said to myself last night, if he don't come to-night I'll come over to see you early this morning. Mebbe you'd know something about him." "Not a thing." He wanted to lighten that wan face, so he gave the best cheer that he could. "But I guess nothing's wrong with him."