Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/50

Rh She paused, and a mist came over her eyes. For a moment the imperishable mother-love dominated her soul and silenced her tongue.

"That was very sad," said the rector.

She repeated his words. "That was very sad." After a moment she continued: "They gave John a good enough place at the Malleson, as good wages as any skilled workman gets; they drove him and bullied him as they do all of his kind—you know they are mere slaves, these factory workmen—and one day they put him into a cage, and some one there dropped him into a pit. When they took him out—well, he might better have been dead. You know; you saw him. Mr. Malleson sent a messenger to me with a paltry sum. I must accept it, not as compensation, but as a gift. And I must release all claims for damages. Naturally, I refused. I employed an attorney to bring suit and get what was justly due us. Mr. Malleson, he's a pillar in your church, fought our claim with every weapon at his command. Mr. Westgate, his lawyer, a member of your vestry, set all of his wits to work to deprive us of our rights. But we would have won out against all of them if it hadn't been that the judge on the bench, also a member, I believe, of your vestry, refused at the last minute to let the jury pass upon the case, and decided it himself, in favor of the Mallesons. I'm not a lawyer; I don't know how it was done; perhaps you do. I only know that it was cruel and horribly unjust. Mr. Farrar, do you wonder that with these shining examples of your religion before me, and with two dead victims of your Christian capitalists to mourn over, I am not falling over myself in my haste to get into your Church?"

She turned her piercing eyes away from the minister's face, to let them rest for a moment on the rigid, sheet-covered figure lying in the next room. Her cheeks were aglow, her breast was heaving, she had spoken from the fulness of a bitter heart. And the