“For board and lodging, Sam,” cried a pretty girl impatient for the talking to cease, and the dance to begin.

“Silence!” a voice called authoritatively and the lecturer stopped and looked round.  Then a big dark man pushed his way through the tittering crowd of girls and reaching the platform, stretched out his hand and grasping one of its supports, leaped lightly to it.  The feat was not an easy one and it was boldly and gracefully done; a hearty cheer greeted its success.  Even John joined in it and then he looked at the man and though there was a slight change in appearance, knew him.  It was Ralph Lugur, and as soon as he was generally recognized, order and silence reigned.  He turned first to the speaker.

“Samuel, my boy,” he said, “keep quiet until you learn how to talk.  Your place is at a bobbin frame, it isn’t on a platform.  What do you know about a rich man’s rights?” and a pretty girl looked saucily at the blushing lad and laughed.

“I’ll tell you, friends,” continued Lugur, “how much right a rich man has in his wealth.  He has practically very little.  The Poor Laws, the Sunday Laws, the School Laws, the Income Tax, and twenty other taxes that he must pay completely prevent him from doing as he likes with his own money.  Rich men are only the stewards of the poor man.  They have to provide him with bread, homes, roads, ships, railways, parks, music, schools, doctors, hospitals, and a large variety of other comforts and amusements.  And, my dear friends, this is not tyranny.  Oh no!  It is civilization.  And if all these obligations did not control him, there are two powerful and significant people whom he has to obey whether he likes to or not.  I mean a lady you don’t know much about, called Mrs. Grundy; and a gentleman whom you know as much of as you want to know, called Policeman A. Don’t you fall into the mistake of taking sides against your country.  No!  Don’t do that but,

    “Let the laws of your own land,
    Good or bad, between you stand.”

Then he slipped off the platform, and the band began to tune up.  And the boy who had been sent off the platform to his bobbin frame went up to the pretty girl who had laughed at his oratorical efforts and asked her to dance.  She made a mocking curtsey, and refused his request, and John who knew both of them said, “Don’t be so saucy, Polly.  Samuel will do better next time.”  But Polly with a little laugh turned away singing,

    “He wears a penny flower in his coat, lah-de-dah! 
    And a penny paper collar round his throat, lah-de-dah! 
    In his mouth a penny pick,
                In his hand a penny stick,
    And a penny in his pocket, lah-de-dah-heigh!”

John and Lugur walked through the village together, and then John discovered that the remodeling of Yoden was Lugur’s gift to the young people who were really to begin life over again in its comfortable handsome shelter.