She had reached the crest of the hill and the factory came to her view.  A breeze was rising from the river and as she looked down at the scene below, as her forbears had looked so many times before her, she felt as a sailor from the north might feel when after drifting around in drowsy tropic seas, he comes at last to his own home port and feels the clean wind whip his face and blow away his languor.

The old familiar office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures regarding her as though they were saying “Where have you been, young lady?  We began to think you had gone.”  Through the window sounded the old symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own particular note or song.

Mary’s eyes shone bright.

Gone, she found, were her feeling of uncertainty, her sighs of regret.  Here at last was something real, something definite, something noble and great in the work of the world.

“And all mine,” she thought with an almost passionate feeling of possession.  “All mine—­mine—­mine—­”

Archey was the first to come in, and it only needed a glance to see that Archey was unhappy.

“I’m afraid the men in the automatic room are shaping for trouble,” he said, as soon as their greetings were over.

“What’s the matter with them?”

“It’s about those four women—­the four who came back.”

Mary’s eyes opened wide.

“There has been quite a lot of feeling,” he continued, “and when the four women turned up this morning again and started work, the men went out and held a meeting in the locker room.  In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the automatic hands went on strike.”

“You mean to say they will go on strike before they will work with their own wives and sisters?”

“That’s the funny part of it.  As far as I can find out, the trouble wasn’t started by our own men—­but by strangers—­men from New York and Boston—­professional agitators, they look like to me—­plenty of money and plenty of talk and clever workmen, too.  I don’t know just how far they’ve gone, but—­”

The office boy appeared in the doorway and he, too, looked worried.

“There’s a committee to see you, Miss Spencer,” he said, “a bunch from the lathe shops.”

“Have they seen Mr. Woodward?”

“No’m.  He referred them to you.”

“All right, Joe.  Send them in, please.”

The committee filed in and Archey noted that they were still wearing their street clothes.  “Looks bad,” he told himself.

There were three men, two of them strangers to Mary, but the third she recognized as one of the teachers in her old “school”—­a thoughtful looking man well past middle age, with a long grey moustache and reflective eyes.  “Mr. Edsol, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes’m,” he solemnly replied.  “That’s me.”

She looked at the other two.  The first had the alert glance and actions which generally mark the orator, the second was a dark, heavy man who never once stopped frowning.