"Are you going out, Willie John?" his mother asked.

"I thought I'd go up and call on Eunice Doran," Grant answered her. "I might as well be neighborly."

He went out, and there was silence in the kitchen for a few minutes. Joe clicked the lock of the gun.

"Do you mind that wild gander I put a ring on three years ago?" he asked his father. "It's back again. I saw it over the marshes to-day."

"It'll take a mate and settle down in the marsh now." His father nodded. "It took it three years to find out that home is a good place. It's a queer, silly bird-the barnacle goose."

A little ripple of laughter came from the mother's lips as she stood over and poked the turf. The elder Grant looked up, astonished. "What are you laughing at, Sarah Ann?" he inquired.

"I was thinking," she answered.

"What was it you were thinking about?" he pursued.

"Oh nothing!" she parried. "I was just thinking."

And she went on teasing the fire, while a subtle, affectionate smile played about the corners of her eyes.

BELFASTERS

"Oh, I'll go down unto Belfast to see that seaport_gay.' A COUNTRY POET.

T

O him the whole conversation, the whole

setting, the whole event, was unreal as ghosts are unreal, or objects on a foggy night. Here was this woman, who had been so nigh to him, and to whom he had been so much, talking of leaving him, in as matter-of-fact a manner as though she were speaking of taking a street-car. Here was the murk of a February evening in Belfast, the minute rain yellowing the street-lamps; the cable-cars rushing by brusquely and short-temperedly, a "get out of the way and be damned to you!" in their crashing, abrupt passage. She was thinking of leaving him, she was thinking of leaving him for good, all because of a strike, mind you! just for nothing more than a strike!

"Well, I'd best be going," she said.

"Well-" He shifted from one foot to the other. "I think it's very foolish of you," he said.

She smiled, as he looked at her, that strange secret smile of hers that meant she had drawn into herself.

He knew every expression on her face-for a year

now.

"What is it you want me to do?" he asked for the fourth time.

"Give the workers in the mill what they want. They ask only bare justice. A couple o' shillings a week! What is it to you?"

"I will not." He shook his head. His great red beard shook too.

"You're a hard man, Aleck," she said softly. "You're no' exactly human. And you 're getting on, Aleck. You're no' young any more.

wee bit soft, man.

"I will not."

It's no shame."

Be a

"Ah, well!" She stepped toward the curb, ready to signal a car. He followed her with his look. Of all the women in his life she had been most to him-she, just a working-girl! He was fond of her. He was more than in love with her. His feeling towards her was no phenomenon but an accepted fact. He admired her, too, which was more than he did any woman, though she had been more to him than any but a wife should be. He admired her for that too-she had gone into the relation so calmly, so open-mindedly, so fearlessly. He admired her; in her was no slight, common blood.

"But, Jennie, I can't leave you like that."

She turned to face him. He was abashed by her steadfast brown eyes.

"Why for no'?" she asked. "Aleck, I'm no lassie that's been fooled. What is between us, Aleck, is because I liked you and I knew you liked me. Don't let that bother your head. I've done you no hurt, Aleck, nor you me. That's our own

affair."

master.

"But why break like this? What for?" "For this, Aleck. You're the owner and the I'm a worker. I've always been a worker. You mind I've never taken a thing from you, Aleck. I'm one of the people you're fighting, Aleck, and I stick by my folks. While this fight's on, Aleck, you and I are finished. That's the way I feel, Aleck. I can't change it."

"You 're foolish!"

"I don't think I am." This time she signaled It stopped with its ill-tempered, hurried

the car.

air.

"When 'll I see you again?"

"When you do what my folks ask in justice, Aleck, and not before." And she was gone.

He stood for a few minutes in the rain. A touch of panic seized him. For a year he had not been so lonely. He felt he was on the verge of doing a foolish thing.

"I will not!" he said doggedly.

He turned down the road sullenly. A great desire was on him to catch the next car and intercept her at a changing-station.

"Stop making a fool o' yourself," he said to himself. "You'll do no such thing."

He plugged on steadily, unmindful of where he was going. He was aboil with perturbation.

"I ha'e gi'en them a couple o' raises this year a'ready!"

He was blind to everything but the action of the workers of his mill, of his father's mill, of his grandfather's mill, defying him openly and stubbornly. And now they had to take Jeanie Lindsay from him, the only woman he had liked wholly in all his days.

"To hell with them!" he said savagely. His red beard bristled.

He stopped suddenly. He shook his fist at an arc-lamp.

"I'll close the mill," he muttered aloud. "I'll close down. I will so. I've just had enough o' it. They ha'e no softie in Aleck Robe'son. I'll close it. Be damned but I will! I will! I will so!"

From Aleck Robertson's earliest infancy he had been bred to the mill, as his father had been by his father before him. It is a small, compact building, off the Falls Road, the Robertson mill is, harboring more than four hundred employees. But

not more