place in society.  If he came out against this lawlessness as a witness it would drag him into courts, his motives would be misunderstood, and the whole thing would end in his disgrace and the loss of his position.  Surely it was none of his business.  He could easily get the papers back to the freight department and no one be the wiser.  Let the iniquity go on.  Let the law be defied.  What was it to him?  He would work out his plans for bettering the condition just before him.  What more could a man do in this railroad business when there was so much going on anyway that made it impossible to live by the Christian standard?  But what would Jesus do if He knew the facts?  That was the question that confronted Alexander Powers as the day wore into evening.

The lights in the office had been turned on.  The whirr of the great engine and the clash of the planers in the big shop continued until six o’clock.  Then the whistle blew, the engine slowed up, the men dropped their tools and ran for the block house.

Powers heard the familiar click, click, of the clocks as the men filed past the window of the block house just outside.  He said to his clerks, “I’m not going just yet.  I have something extra tonight.”  He waited until he heard the last man deposit his block.  The men behind the block case went out.  The engineer and his assistants had work for half an hour but they went out by another door.

Chapter Six

“If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

“And whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”

When Rachel Winslow and Virginia Page separated after the meeting at the First Church on Sunday they agreed to continue their conversation the next day.  Virginia asked Rachel to come and lunch with her at noon, and Rachel accordingly rang the bell at the Page mansion about half-past eleven.  Virginia herself met her and the two were soon talking earnestly.

“The fact is,” Rachel was saying, after they had been talking a few moments, “I cannot reconcile it with my judgment of what Christ would do.  I cannot tell another person what to do, but I feel that I ought not to accept this offer.”

“What will you do then?” asked Virginia with great interest.

“I don’t know yet, but I have decided to refuse this offer.”

Rachel picked up a letter that had been lying in her lap and ran over its contents again.  It was a letter from the manager of a comic opera offering her a place with a large traveling company of the season.  The salary was a very large figure, and the prospect held out by the manager was flattering.  He had heard Rachel sing that Sunday morning when the stranger had interrupted the service.  He had been much impressed.  There was money in that voice and it ought to be used in comic opera, so said the letter, and the manager wanted a reply as soon as possible.