The indictment made one thing clear. Algoma was not a mere morbid growth, to be extirpated by force, but an evidence of disease: and a disease, not of individuals or of classes, but of a civilisation. The roots of that disease were not, as a circular from a mine manager had said, in the "tyrannous labour unions." They went far deeper than that. They were in her own heart and brain. They were in the hearts and brains of every man and woman in the world. It was the explanation of the mine owners, she knew, that they fought for "the right of the American workman to work for whom, what and when he pleased." It was the defence of the miners that they fought for the power of organisation. Both quarrels were just, she felt with a terrible sense of hopelessness: both demanded the right to rule. Both would fight to the death for that right. It was folly to hope for an equal division of power. The line was too fine, too fluctuating. One or the other must lose. Talk of concessions, of improvement of conditions, only obscured the issue. She put herself momentarily in the place of the employers, the men of her class, the men she knew: and her jaw hardened. Freedom was the essence of American life. She would never permit those who took her bread to dictate what and how she should give it. She would fight to the end for her freedom. Then, resolutely, she put herself in the place of those who demanded that she yield that freedom. Unconsciously her fingers clenched. She saw quite clearly that "freedom" took on a different meaning then. It became "tyranny." These creatures who came up out of the earth to burn and destroy, who flouted law and the rights of property, were but fragments of mankind's never-ending fight for liberty. Though, in their groping progress toward the goal, they wallowed in blood and folly, destroying the good with the bad, murdering the saints with the sinners, none the less were they a part of the blundering march of democracy. Algoma was but an outpost of a struggle that was universal. The crust of convention and pretence had burst through momentarily, and the seething cauldron, full of the molten future, was exposed to frightened eyes. As the hours passed, a new point of view took form in Judith's mind, and things which had always been quite clear now seemed not clear at all. She had never been more thoroughly muddled in her life, but she realised with a sense of satisfaction that the very confusion of her mind indicated the wiping away of those specious answers to all questions which had been an absolute preventive against any real speculation. Her slate was blank. There was room for new writing.