Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/69

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64
THE UNALLOWED HARVEST

are protected, by the very fact of their sex, from ever being called upon to make them known. But if Mary Bradley had, at any time, repented her choice of a husband, no one had ever heard her express such a thought. She had remained absolutely faithful and helpful to him from the beginning to the end. And, in a crude, undemonstrative way, he had appreciated her and had been good to her. He had never abused her by word or deed, not even on those infrequent occasions when he had come home in his cups. He had turned over to her his weekly wages; he had never crossed her will; he had given her of his unimportant best. What more could she have asked? So, dispassionately, superficially perhaps, she sorrowed at his death. She felt no such pangs of grief as tore her heart when her girl baby died. That death had cut into the core of her being. But the passing of any soul that one has seen familiarly, illuminating a living body however dimly, cannot fail to arouse at least some semblance of sorrow in the normal human heart. And the demonstration made by her husband's fellow-workers touched her also. Glancing out through the open doorway she saw that the street in front of her house was full of them. Stephen Lamar came to her and asked her permission to address the people from her porch. She gave her consent willingly. Lamar was the protagonist of the workingmen of the city. He was their leader in the social revolt which was eventually to free them from the chains of capitalism, and restore to them their natural rights. Somewhere, somehow, he had become learned in the things that pertained to the struggle between the classes, he was gifted with a crude eloquence that made his speeches popular, and whenever he spoke to them, the workers heard him gladly. Now, as they saw him come out onto the porch and stand, with bared head, facing them, a murmur of approval ran through the crowd. He addressed them as "Comrades in Toil." No one