“God bless you, Jem!” she replied.  “But it is too late now—­too late!”

She rapidly turned away.  Jem felt that the great thing was to reach home and solitude.  His heart was filled with jealous anguish.  Mary loved another!  She was lost to him for evermore.  A frenzied longing for blood entered his mind as he brooded that night over his loss.  But at last the thought of duty brought peace to his soul.  If Carson loved Mary, Carson must marry her.  It was Jem’s part to speak straightforwardly to Carson, to be unto Mary as a brother.

Four days later his opportunity came.  He met Carson in an unfrequented lane.

“May I speak a word wi’ you, sir?” said Jem respectfully.

“Certainly, my good man,” replied Harry Carson.

“I think, sir, you’re keeping company wi’ Mary Barton?”

“Mary Barton!  Ay, that is her name.  An arrant flirt the little hussy is, but very pretty.”

“I will tell you in plain words,” said Jem, angered, “what I have got to say to you.  I’m an old friend of Mary’s and her father’s, and I want to know if you mean fair by Mary or not.”

“You will have the kindness to leave us to ourselves,” answered Carson contemptuously.  “No one shall interfere between my little girl and me.  Get out of my way!  Won’t you?  Then I’ll make you!”

He raised his cane, and smote the mechanic on his face.  An instant afterwards he lay stretched in the muddy road, Jem standing over him, panting with rage.  Just then a policeman, who had been watching them unobserved, interfered with expostulations and warnings.

“If you dare to injure her,” shouted Jem, as he was dragged away, “I will wait you where no policeman can step in between.  And God shall judge between us two!”

* * * * *

The mill-workers had struck against low wages.  Five haggard, earnest-looking men had presented the workpeople’s demands to the assembled mill-owners, and the demands had been rejected.  None had been fiercer in opposing the delegates, none more bitter in mockery of their rags and leanness, than the son of old Mr. Carson.

That evening, starved, irritated, despairing men gathered to hear the delegates tell of their failure.

“It’s the masters as has wrought this woe,” said John Barton in a low voice.  “It’s the masters as should pay for it.  Set me to serve out the masters, and see if there’s aught I’ll stick at!”

Deeper and darker grew the import of the speeches as the men stood hoarsely muttering their meaning out with set teeth and livid looks.  After a fierce and terrible oath had been sworn, a number of pieces of paper, one of them marked, were shuffled in a hat.  The gas was extinguished; each drew a paper.  The gas was re-lighted.  Each examined his paper, with a countenance as immovable as he could make it.  Then they went every one his own way.

He who had drawn the marked paper had drawn the lot of the assassin.  And no one, save God and his own conscience, knew who was the appointed murderer.