Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/147

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CHAPTER IX
THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE

Ruth Tracy was as good as her word. She went to call on Mary Bradley. She found her in the little house on Factory Hill from the porch of which Stephen Lamar had addressed the crowd on the day of Bradley's funeral. It was a bleak November afternoon; a Saturday half-holiday for the more favored class of workers; the busy end of a toilsome week for those whose occupations brought them no week-day respite. The rows of small, brown houses, some of them ill-kept and dilapidated, formed a cheerless foreground to an unattractive landscape. But Ruth Tracy was not unaccustomed to the appearance of an environment such as this, and she was not depressed by the scene. She had done much visiting among the poor. She had left her car at the foot of the hill, and had walked up. She had learned by experience that her work among these people was most effective when there was the least display of luxury.

From a man who overtook her on the street she inquired her way to the Bradley house.

"I am going there myself," he replied, "and I'll show you."

He walked along with her—it was not more than a block or two—and brought her to Mrs. Bradley's door. During this brief walk, however, she learned that her guide was no other than Stephen Lamar, of whom she had often heard, but whom she had not before, to her knowledge, seen. He had taken a personal interest, he told her, in Mrs. Bradley, and had found employment for her during the recent political campaign, at the