“Go and speak to the engineer, and tell him to shut down,” said Robert.

“You ain’t going to turn them out, after all?” gasped Flynn.  He was deadly white.

“No, I am not.  I only want to speak to them,” replied Robert, shortly.

When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the employes, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and menace.  They anticipated the worst by this order.

“I want to say to you all,” said Robert, in a loud, clear voice, “that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with the cut of ten per cent.  I will make it five instead of ten per cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business improves.  I will, however, try it as long as possible.  If the hard times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any measures I am forced to take.  And, on the contrary, should business improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former standard at once.”

The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish.  Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man.  The workmen stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus of “Thank ye’s,” with two or three shrill crows of cheers.

Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work recommenced.

“He’s the right sort, after all,” said Granville Joy to John Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it.  He was very thin and pale.  He had suffered privations, and now came additional worry of mind.  He could not help thinking that this might bring about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his spiritual dues at any cost.

“It’s no more than he ought to do,” growled a man at Granville’s right.  “S’pose he does lose a little money?”

“It ain’t many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that,” said John Sargent.  He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so pinched.  He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the necessities of others had almost forced him there.  Now and then he glanced across the room at Maria, whose narrow shoulders he could see bent painfully over her work.  He was in love with Maria, but no one suspected it, least of all Maria herself.

“Lord! don’t talk about the New Testament.  Them days is past,” growled the man on the other side of Joy.

“They ain’t past for me,” said John Sargent, stoutly.  A dark flush rose to his cheek as if he were making a confession of love.