Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/301

296 struction of others, he made his work invaluable. His chair at the office of the Malleson Manufacturing Company had been practically deserted for weeks. He was not needed there. As a matter of fact he never had been needed there. But the cessation of the company's activities, and the president's attitude of hostility toward him, had made his presence at the factory even less necessary, not to say less welcome, than it had ever been before. He was entirely free to engage in charitable work, and to the best of his ability, and to the extent of his means, he did engage in it. And it was none the less to his credit that his labors in this behalf were carried on under the direct supervision of the rector of Christ Church, and of his zealous co-workers, Ruth Tracy and Mary Bradley. Many a desolate home was lightened, for the time being at least, by his cheery words, his winning smile, and his material gifts as he made his scheduled calls or accompanied the Widow Bradley on her pathetic rounds. For she, too, had vacated an office chair to give her time to charity. She traveled the streets of poverty-stricken sections by day, and many a night she spent at the bedside of the sick, or in well-nigh hopeless efforts to comfort those in the deepest of all affliction. What little money she had, beyond an amount sufficient to supply her own daily needs, was soon exhausted, for she could not bear to see suffering while she had a penny to relieve it. But the sympathy of her heart, the comfort of her voice, the work of her hands, these things were inexhaustible.

She sat, one night, at the bedside of a dying child—a poor, half-starved, half-frozen waif of a girl, offspring of improvident and penniless parents, innocent victim of the stubbornness of forces contending for economic mastery. The tossing of the shrunken little body had ceased, and no moaning came now from the pale, pinched lips. The child lay, mindless, motionless, with weakly fluttering pulse, waiting, unwittingly, for the