Her cheeks paled. Was he--could he be about to ask her to share his life? It was impossible! Yet what else could he mean? To what else could his words be tending? She was awed, frightened--yet warmed by a surge of pride. She thought of her father....If he could see and know! If knowledge could only pass to him that his daughter had been thought worthy by such a man to play her part for the Cause!...She waited tensely, hand pressed to her bosom. Dulac stepped toward her, barbarically handsome. She felt the force, the magnetism of him. It called to her, compelled her....She could not lift her eyes. Slowly he approached another step. It was as though he were forced to her against his will. The silence in the room was the tense silence of a human crisis....Then it was broken ruthlessly. There came a pounding on the door that was not a knock, but an alarm. It was imperative, excited, ominous. "Oh..." Ruth cried. Her mother was opening the door. "Dulac! Where's Dulac?" a man's voice demanded. "Here," he replied. "What is it?" "O'Hagan's in town," the man panted, rushing into the room. "They've brought in O'Hagan and his gang of bullies." O'Hagan, king of strike breakers! Ruth knew that name well, and what the arrival of the man of evil omen foretold. It promised violence, riot, bloodshed, suffering. "They're going to try to run, then," said Dulac, calmly. "The police have escorted a mob of scabs into the mill yards. They've tried to drive away our pickets. They've locked up Higgins and Bowen. Got Mason, too, but the crowd took him away from the police." "It's on their own heads," said Dulac, solemnly. "I'll come with you." He turned to Ruth and took her hand. "You see," he said, "it calls me away--even from a moment like that...." CHAPTER VI Malcolm Lightener was not a man to send messages nor to depend upon telephones. He was as direct as a catapult, and was just as regardful of ceremony. The fact that it was his and everybody else's dinner hour did not hold him back an instant from having himself driven to the Foote residence and demanding instant speech with Mr. Foote. Mr. Foote, knowing Lightener, shrugged his shoulders and motioned Bonbright to follow him from the table. "If we asked him to be seated and wait," said he, "Lightener would burst into the dining room." They found their visitor not seated, but standing like a granite monolith in the center of the library. "Well," he said, observing no formalities of greeting, "you've chucked a brick into the hornets' nest." "Won't you be seated?" asked Mr. Foote, with dignified courtesy.