rr^v
 
 WHAT SOME OF THE CRITICS SAID 
 ABOUT THE PLAY 
 
 A play that will stimulate thought upon a subject of vital impor- 
 tance to the nation. WILLIAM WINTER in New York Tribune. 
 
 The play holds the audience in a firm grip of interest from begin- 
 ning to end. The Globe. 
 
 Interesting play, well acted and well worth seeing. The New 
 York Times. 
 
 A play with insides, real humor, and much sincere feeling. It 
 agitates one's gray matter. The Sun. 
 
 The play is a strong, coherent story of human impulses and 
 abounds in clever lines. The Journal of Commerce. 
 
 Having ideas in it, the piece is welcome; moreover, it provides 
 excellent entertainment, vital and significant drama. The Evening 
 Post. 
 
 "The Battle" fights its way to popular success. We have to 
 thank Mr. Moffett for giving us what we want. ASHTON STEVENS. 
 
 It is a good play BECAUSE IT MAKES PEOPLE THINK, even 
 though they may think in a primitive and somewhat childish way. 
 It is one of a number of plays putting on the stage the actual ques- 
 tions of to-day, and making vivid and clear pictures that are hazy in 
 the average mind. . . . It is an interesting, startling, highly 
 dramatic performance. Editorial in New York Evening Journal. 
 
 These are real men and real women ; the emotions are real emo- 
 tions, human, understandable ; the theories advanced have truth in 
 them and conviction. ... It is a play that we believe will suc- 
 ceed, and succeed largely because its appeal is to the best in its 
 audience, not to the worst. The Washington Herald.
 
 MARGARET. 
 
 Frontispiece.
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM 
 SCENES IN THE PLAY 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 THE BATTLE.
 
 TO 
 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 TO WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT 
 I OWE MY START IN LITERARY WORK 
 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 
 GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED 
 
 NEW YORK, April 10, 1909.
 
 A WORD OF EXPLANATION 
 
 MY play, " The Battle," was produced December 
 21, 1908, at the Savoy Theater, New York City, and 
 not only met with success but stirred up violent con- 
 troversy. It was vigorously attacked by socialists, 
 who charged me with unfairness toward their cause 
 and misrepresentation of their ideas. They held meet- 
 ings and denounced me ; they filled newspaper columns 
 with angry protests. One of their leaders, a God- 
 fearing lady and a friend of mine, spoke of me in 
 the public press as a black beetle in the path of prog- 
 ress. This showed that some one had been hurt! 
 
 On December 2Qth I made the following statement 
 in the New York Tribune : " If the creed of socialism 
 is not set forth in ' The Battle ' as clearly or vigor- 
 ously as the creed of capital, it is because I have never 
 been able to understand what the real creed of social- 
 ism is among the various and conflicting varieties ; also 
 because I have never had much respect for a dream 
 of universal happiness that involves wholesale con- 
 fiscation of the property of others." 
 
 I still hold that view. 
 
 The play continued to be widely discussed before 
 numerous clubs and societies, and, by a singular chain 
 of circumstances, the name of the richest man in 
 America was amusingly connected with " The Battle,"
 
 8 A WORD OF EXPLANATION 
 
 it being said that he had financed this play, which, of 
 course, was utterly untrue. 
 
 Various publishers now urged me to make a novel- 
 ization of " The Battle," and I finally did so, blending 
 as effectively as I could new text based on the dialogue 
 of the play with about half the old text of my orig- 
 inal novel, " A King in Rags." In this difficult work 
 of adaptation and reconstruction I received the assist- 
 ance of a skillful writer, whose services I hereby 
 acknowledge. 
 
 As to my real convictions touching poverty and 
 wealth, I may add that I certainly believe in a fairer 
 division of the products of toil. All who know and 
 care are agreed that at present this division is not 
 fair. There is too much for the few, too little for 
 the many. This is common sense, not socialism. 
 
 I believe that exceptional men who do exceptional 
 things are entitled to exceptional rewards, but there 
 should be a limit to these rewards. It is inconceivable 
 that any man can earn or deserve a thousand million 
 dollars! Or a hundred million dollars! Or fifty 
 million dollars! And it is intolerable injustice that 
 such enormous sums should be inherited by persons 
 who have done nothing exceptional, but have merely 
 benefited by an accident of birth. I believe in an 
 inheritance tax so rigorously graduated that on a rich 
 man's death the State would take all that he leaves 
 above, say, ten or twenty millions. 
 
 It is certain that our captains of industry are op- 
 pressive, often dishonest in their dealings, but so is 
 the small business man in his dealings, so is the aver- 
 age American citizen. The standards of our indus-
 
 A WORD OF EXPLANATION 9 
 
 trial leaders are the standards of the American people 
 not excepting socialists. And the only way to stop 
 dishonesty in high places is to establish honesty in 
 low places. 
 
 One of the best things that could happen in this 
 country, one of the most compelling influences toward 
 a fairer division of the products of toil, would be the 
 sight of a multimillionaire malefactor behind iron 
 bars. Or, if such an example may not be hoped for, 
 if laws are made only to be evaded by rich scoun- 
 drels, then let us build them statues of dishonor in our 
 public places; in which case some of our proudest 
 and richest families would read, on tablets of stone 
 or bronze, strange tributes to their founders, like the 
 following : 
 
 GOD GAVE THIS MAN 
 
 RARE AND PRECIOUS TALENTS 
 
 AND OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 WHICH HE USED 
 
 TO PLUNDER AND OPPRESS 
 
 HIS FELLOW-MEN. 
 
 Some such deliberate expression of public con- 
 tempt, together with the jailing of a Haggleton or 
 two, and the inheritance tax above suggested, might 
 do something to restrain privileged greed and to put 
 our national wealth where it rightfully belongs, which, 
 with all deference to my confident but disunited so- 
 cialist friends, is more than their pretty dreams are 
 ever likely to accomplish. 
 
 C. M.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. DAWN IN HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS . . 15 
 
 II. JENNY MORAN 26 
 
 III. PHILLIP AND MARGARET 36 
 
 IV. JOHN J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE . . 47 
 
 V. FATHER AND SON 59 
 
 VI. AN IMPORTANT DECISION . . . . 71 
 
 VII. MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW . . 81 
 
 VIII. TOILERS AND WRECKS 94 
 
 IX. MORE WRECKS 108 
 
 X. AFTER THE BALL 120 
 
 XI. OUR DAILY BREAD 129 
 
 XII. HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND . . . 140 
 
 XIII. ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 151 
 
 XIV. HAGGLETON WINS A POINT . . . .165 
 
 XV. THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM . . . .180 
 
 XVI. MARGARET AND HAGGLETON . . . .196 
 
 XVII. THE MASTER DIVER 208 
 
 XVIII. HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST . . . 217 
 
 XIX. CAPITAL AND LABOR 230 
 
 XX. MORAN FINDS JENNY 243 
 
 XXI. THE BATTLE Is ON 257 
 
 XXII. MORAN JFiNos His MAN 271 
 
 XXIII. MARGARET UNVANQUISHED .... 283 
 XXIV. THE BATTLE WON . . . . . .292
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Margaret Frontispiece 
 
 "My wife! It is her handwriting!" 51 
 
 ' ' Do you really think that you can win him away from 
 
 this girl?" 161 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, " you are Phillip's father" . . . 202 
 " For the last time choose between him and me " . . 264 
 " It is the call of the blood " 282
 
 Poverty is an ugly beast, a Frankenstein monster, 
 created by the greedy and luxurious rich for their 
 own undoing. Poverty begets seven lesser beasts, 
 Ignorance, Disease, Drunkenness, Hunger, Nakedness, 
 Vice, and Crime ; which seven war ceaselessly upon 
 society until they destroy it. So it has been through 
 civilizations that have passed away, rotted by this 
 blight ; so it must be until the parent beast, Poverty, 
 is itself destroyed. Phillip's Idea. 
 
 Poverty is the lot of the weak and the unworthy, 
 the survival of the unfittest. Haggletoris Idea. 
 
 Poverty would disappear if there were a fair di- 
 vision of the products of toil. Gentle 's Idea.
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 DAWN IN HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS 
 
 THE night workers had long since begun their 
 weary tramp home through the crowded tene- 
 ment district of which Market Street is the congested 
 center, the most densely populated thoroughfare of 
 New York. The streets were still empty in comparison 
 with what they would be a few hours later, but quiet ? 
 Never. 
 
 At no hour of the day or night is that quarter of 
 the city without its noises. They succeed each other 
 in a regular, daily repeated order. One can tell by 
 them each hour of the twenty-four. 
 
 Yellowish gas jets flared dimly behind the dust-ob- 
 scured windows of the small grocery stores, open for 
 the early purchases of a hand-to-mouth existence. 
 The rattling milk wagons had come and stopped and 
 gone two hours earlier; already the little mothers of 
 the district were about, little servants as well, drudges 
 without pay, yet most of them preserving, by a saving 
 grace, in an existence that is so near a curse, the resili- 
 ency of childhood. 
 
 Their hour of noise would come later ; a few, brief 
 minutes of chattering and skipping on the way to
 
 16 THE BATTLE 
 
 school, and again at the end of the session, when they 
 returned to new tasks. Meanwhile, they were purchas- 
 ing the scanty breakfast, pushing boldly in among their 
 unkempt, unwashed elders, giving their orders con- 
 fidently and passing over the pennies clutched tightly 
 in their little fists, or bravely battling for credit. 
 
 A slight snow had fallen over night. It was still 
 white on stoops and cellar doors, but ground al- 
 ready to a brownish-gray powder on sidewalks and in 
 the street. It would hardly outlive the morning. 
 
 Market Street looked picturesque, however, for the 
 moment, its window sills outlined in white, upon which 
 shone the dim glow of gas and lamps behind drawn 
 shades. Towering tenements alternated with three- 
 story buildings, relics of earlier prosperous days long 
 forgotten not even a tradition, indeed, to their pres- 
 ent inhabitants. 
 
 It was still the hour consecrated to the noise of the 
 alarm clocks. Every tenement in all that street re- 
 sounded with their rattle the call to the daily strug- 
 gle for bread. Within twenty minutes, generally, the 
 door behind which the clock had sounded its metallic 
 warning would open, and a muffled figure would 
 emerge, dinner pail in hand, to clump down the stairs 
 to an accompaniment of many sounds and many odors 
 the crying of children, the scolding of women, the 
 rattle of cups and pans, the aroma of coffee, the acrid 
 smell of frying bacon, the sweet scent of doctored, 
 cheap tobacco. And always coughs, the coughs of chil- 
 dren, the coughs of grown people, for Market Street 
 is famous as one side of the " Lung Block," discussed 
 at tuberculosis congresses the world over.
 
 HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS 17 
 
 " Fresh air costs nothing," they say. Ah, but it costs 
 the heat that it drives out! The coal that cooks the 
 evening meal is bought by the pail, at a profit to the 
 dealer of over one hundred per cent. Cold oxygen, 
 therefore, is expensive in winter for the poor, for it 
 doubles the price of warmth. 
 
 An alarm clock rattled in a back room in one of 
 the towering tenements, built of brick, without orna- 
 mentation, and made hideous by row upon row of nar- 
 row windows. 
 
 In one corner of the room stood an iron stove, rusty, 
 its silly, useless ornaments coated with a mixture of 
 grease and ashes. Beside the stove was a sink, with a 
 bar of coarse yellow soap on a broken saucer, two tow- 
 els hanging beside it to prove that this was the wash- 
 room as well as the kitchen section of the " apartment." 
 
 The alarm clock stopped ringing. A young woman 
 seated at a table in the other corner of the room had 
 not looked up, nor stopped for a moment in her occu- 
 pation of gilding plaster figures with a brush which she 
 dipped from time to time in a pan. A lamp, shaded so 
 as to throw all its light directly upon her work, stood 
 beside her. 
 
 A man's sleepy, quarrelsome voice came from the 
 shadows at the side of the room. 
 
 " What time is it, Jenny ? " 
 
 " After seven. You'd better get up." 
 
 " The raffle clock says seven the installment clock 
 stopped when you stopped payin', Moran." 
 
 It was a man's voice that volunteered this informa- 
 tion, a younger and fresher voice than that of the first 
 speaker.
 
 1 8 THE BATTLE 
 
 A child whimpered. Another coughed. 
 
 " Shut up ! " said the first voice gruffly. 
 
 The girl addressed as Jenny rose and took the shade 
 off the lamp, thus lighting up the entire room. 
 
 She was strikingly handsome, in a buxom, sensu- 
 ous way, but the droop of resignation of her mouth 
 struggled with the line of revolt that met it front the 
 delicate nostrils downward. Her eyes shone dark un- 
 der the arched eyebrows. In them there was unrest, 
 and knowledge of good and evil, a vague wonder, and 
 a look of hunger of mind and heart. 
 
 The girl went over to the stove, raked out the ashes 
 listlessly, and set over the fire a coffeepot that had 
 been kept warm ever since she had begun her work, at 
 five o'clock, the hour of the noise of rattling milk cans. 
 
 The brighter light which now filled the room re- 
 vealed two iron bedsteads, in one of them a man and 
 two children, and in the other the younger man who 
 had made the facetious remark about the installment 
 clock, which had stopped going when Moran had 
 stopped paying. Both beds were tousled and untidy. 
 
 The floor was mostly bare, of worn, uneven, un- 
 matched boards. A ragged rug of unexpectedly 
 good quality, its colors coated with dirt, suggested that 
 it, at least, had seen better days. So did a carved ma- 
 hogany hatstand. 
 
 On a roughly painted mantelpiece stood, side by 
 side, the alarm clock, the " installment clock," and an 
 elaborate French marble clock, also out of order. It 
 gave the third note of vanished well-being. 
 
 Moran sat up in bed. Jenny returned to her work, 
 sitting down with her back toward the beds.
 
 HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS ig 
 
 " Can't sleep with that kid coughing and kicking," 
 grumbled Moran, tossing aside the grimy bed cov- 
 erings. 
 
 He drew on his shoes, hitched up the trousers in 
 which he had slept, crossed over to the sink and washed 
 his face and hands. Then he turned to a bare table, 
 sat down, and said : 
 
 " Good morning, Jenny." 
 
 " Morning, pop." 
 
 " Do I get any breakfast? " 
 
 " Nothing but bread and coffee," Jenny replied in- 
 differently, as she worked with feverish haste at her 
 task of gilding the plaster statuettes. 
 
 " Bread and coffee ! " Moran snarled. " That's a 
 fine meal to keep a man going twelve hours a day in 
 a damp, dirty bake cellar." 
 
 He got up, poured himself a cup of coffee, cut off a 
 hunk of bread and began to eat, grumbling to him- 
 self the while, his vague, watery eyes wandering along 
 the wall, staring unseeingly at the cheap color prints of 
 the rulers of Europe that formed its incongruous or- 
 nament. 
 
 A large picture of a young man in diving costume, 
 a veritable Hercules, his heavy helmet resting on his 
 arm, occupied a place of honor all by itself on the wall 
 near the door of the closet that served as Jenny's bed- 
 room. 
 
 Moran had a weak, discouraged face, with incon- 
 gruously scowling eyes. If he had ever had a Chris- 
 tian name, it had long been forgotten. He was 
 " pop " to his only remaining child, Jenny ; " Moran " 
 to everybody else in the bakery where he worked, in
 
 20 THE BATTLE 
 
 the corner saloon, and at the meetings of the timid, 
 half-hearted revolutionaries which he visited from time 
 to time. 
 
 The younger man had propped himself up in bed, 
 lighted a candle, and was now reading a paper. He 
 was Joe Caffrey, the widower of Jenny's elder sister 
 who had died three weeks before. Now, like the two 
 children, he was a " boarder " of Jenny's. 
 
 A typical child of the New York slums, Joe had a 
 fund of humor, which found endless food in his dis- 
 gruntled father-in-law. He hated work, and managed, 
 somehow or other, to live without it for long stretches 
 at a time. Jenny had once been a reliable source of 
 funds for him good for an occasional " fiver " but 
 all that was over now. In his heart Joe considered 
 her a fool. Why should she struggle with poverty, 
 when 
 
 Joe read on, rustling the paper. Moran gulped down 
 his bread and coffee; Jenny continued her incessant 
 painting of the plaster casts. The two children were 
 whispering together. 
 
 " Hello ! " said Joe, looking up from his paper, 
 " here's a description of John J. Haggleton's private 
 yacht. He sails to-day on a cruise." 
 
 " Haggleton ! " growled Moran. " That's our land- 
 lord. I'd like to have him here ! " 
 
 Joe Caffrey kept on reading. 
 
 " Oh, say, listen to this ! " he exclaimed : " ' The 
 walls are paneled in satinwood ; under foot are velvet 
 carpets twelve feet wide, without seam. Electric 
 lights shine everywhere. Closets open mysteri- 
 ously out of the walls. It will take no less than
 
 HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS 21 
 
 five thousand dollars a month to run this ocean 
 palace. . . . ' " 
 
 Moran struck the table with his fist, and jumped 
 up in a rage. 
 
 " Damned millionaire ! " he shouted. 
 
 " Oh well," remarked his son-in-law, stretching 
 out his arms luxuriously and pulling the thin, patched 
 quilt over his chest, " oh, well, I think I will take a 
 yachtin' cruise myself. I'm gettin' awfully tired, 
 dontcherknow." 
 
 Moran scowled. It was time for him to go to work, 
 so he would have to vent his hatred of the rich upon 
 the dough he kneaded. He took his hat from the tar- 
 nished chandelier, and slapped it on his head. For 
 some reason or other he always hung his hat there, 
 never on the rack. It was broad daylight now. Jen- 
 ny extinguished the lamp, Joe blew out his candle. 
 Through the cheap, draggly lace curtains of the win- 
 dows a superb view of the East River and the Brook- 
 lyn Bridge was revealed. 
 
 As Moran opened the door, his daughter stopped 
 him. 
 
 " I wish you'd stop at Mrs. Binney's," she said, 
 " and ask her to come around and look at Benny's 
 cough. He might have croup." 
 
 " Benny ! " snarled Moran. " It's a rotten idea 
 having those kids here, anyway. Why don't they stay 
 with their father?" 
 
 " Their father," answered his daughter practically, 
 going over to the children's bed, " their father pays 
 us four dollars a month for their board." 
 
 Moran turned to go. But before he closed the
 
 22 THE BATTLE 
 
 door behind him, he growled : " This is a hell of a 
 home ! " 
 
 The children a girl of ten and a boy two years 
 younger whimpered. Benny coughed again, then 
 wailed. His sister put her arms around him and 
 soothed him. 
 
 " Don't cry, you star boarders," called Joe good- 
 naturedly. " You're goin' to have presents do you 
 hear? Beautiful presents. Santa Claus forgot you at 
 Christmas, but that was a mistake." 
 
 The two youngsters sat up in bed, and gazed at him 
 with eager expectancy. 
 
 " What are you telling them that for ? " asked 
 Jenny indignantly. 
 
 " Never you mind. Come here, Emmy ! " 
 
 The girl clambered out of bed, and went to him in 
 her nightgown. Benny started to follow, but was re- 
 strained by Jenny. 
 
 " Now, listen," continued Joe. " In a minute, just 
 as soon as I get up, that sympathetic and good-lookin' 
 lady over there is goin' to lend me two dollars." 
 
 " Not on your life," said the sympathetic and good- 
 looking lady, with much energy. 
 
 " Them two dollars," continued Joe, without pay- 
 ing the slightest attention to her, " I'm goin' to take 
 over to Wallace's pool room and play on a sure thing 
 Corn Cob." 
 
 " Corn Cob," repeated Emmy uncomprehendingly. 
 
 "Yes. It's a sure pipe. Why don't you laugh? 
 It's a cinch at fifteen to one. So I'll come back this 
 afternoon with thirty bones." 
 
 " Gee ! Thirty bones ! " The child's eyes shone.
 
 HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS 23 
 
 " Of which thirty bones," Joe explained distinctly, 
 watching Jenny, " ten go to the sympathetic and good- 
 lookin' lady, leavin' twenty for personal expenses and 
 and miscellaneous charities. Ahem ! " 
 
 " Fifteen to one a sure thing," repeated Joe im- 
 pressively. 
 
 " Nothin' doin'," said his sister-in-law. 
 
 " That means," resumed Joe, again pretending not 
 to hear her, and addressing himself to Emmy, " a new 
 doll for you, and what do you want, Benny ? " 
 
 " I want a yacht," shrilled the little fellow. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! He wants a yacht like that millionaire 
 Haggleton ! All right, my son, you get a yacht." 
 
 Jenny faced him. 
 
 " Better cut out pool rooms, Joe, and look for a 
 job." 
 
 " I might find one," he shrugged. " Emmy, hand me 
 them cigarettes out of my vest pocket. So! Now a 
 match. Right. There's a good girl. Now, take Benny 
 into the other room, in Lizzie's bed." 
 
 Emmy went over to her brother, wrapped him up, 
 took him in her arms, and obediently disappeared with 
 him, closing the door behind them. 
 
 Joe, who, like Moran, had slept half dressed, now 
 rose, washed himself hastily, whistling cheerily the 
 while, and keeping his cigarette alight. Then he re- 
 turned to the subject of his talk. 
 
 " You hinted at lookin' for a job, Jenny," he ob- 
 served, " but that supposes a desire for work, and in 
 me that would mean sweepin' reform. Now, reform 
 may suit you, my dear sister-in-law, but " 
 
 " Cut it out," said Jenny sharply. " That's enough."
 
 24 THE BATTLE 
 
 She blushed painfully and her eyes filled with tears. 
 
 " No offense," soothed Joe. " Here, have a ciga- 
 rette?" 
 
 "Those things? Ugh!" 
 
 " I know you prefer Turkish. Here." 
 
 He fished in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and 
 threw it at her. She caught it deftly, lighted it, and 
 inhaled the smoke with keen relish. 
 
 " If a girl will be an idiot," continued Joe " It's 
 all right to keep straight, but why go to extremes ? " 
 
 He watched her closely, curiously. She had " re- 
 formed," given up finery and ease but why? He 
 knew the reason she gave, but he did not believe it 
 to be the true one. 
 
 Why had she suddenly returned to poverty, squalor, 
 and grinding toil? She was young, handsome, she 
 loved comfort, she hated work. Comfort, ease were 
 hers for the taking. What had happened could never 
 be undone, anyway. Why pay the cost and then re- 
 nounce ? 
 
 She stood still, her well-formed hands, roughened 
 by toil at cooking stove and washboard, folded before 
 her. She did not look at him, she did not appear to 
 see him. His eyes followed the direction of her 
 glance. A gleam of intelligence came into his face. 
 
 " I know why you done it," he said, suddenly en- 
 lightened. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " It wasn't for my poor dead Liz that you reformed, 
 it was for him! " 
 
 He pointed at the picture of the diver on the wall. 
 
 " Yes, for Phil," she said.
 
 HAGGLETON'S TENEMENTS 25 
 
 " Yes, for Phil," he repeated. 
 
 Jenny smoked on quietly for a while. Then she 
 said tersely : 
 
 " You're not such a fool, Joe." 
 
 " Oh, that was easy," he returned modestly. " You 
 always have your eyes on that picture. So you're 
 stuck on him ? " 
 
 " Good and plenty." 
 
 It was a common slang phrase, but Joe felt its ir- 
 revocable intensity. 
 
 " All right," he said. " I'll stand in with you. But 
 we'll have to sidetrack the other maiden." 
 
 Jenny hesitated a moment and then burst out: 
 
 " The high-toned girl at Mrs. Binney's boarding 
 house? " 
 
 " Sure. The trained nurse. Miss Margaret Law- 
 rence. She's the only peach on the tree for Phil." 
 
 Jenny clinched her hands. Her eyes narrowed and 
 grew darker, her mouth grim. 
 
 " She'll never get him ! Never ! " 
 
 She spoke the words with subdued fierceness. 
 
 "All right. I'll help you. You need help, so 
 do I Do I get that two dollars ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then I don't help." 
 
 Jenny looked at him, opened her lips, closed them 
 again, and returned to her plaster figures, still smok- 
 ing. Joe continued to watch her. 
 
 A knock at the door caused them both to look to- 
 ward it.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 JENNY MORAN 
 
 THE knock was repeated. 
 Joe looked at Jenny. 
 
 " Come in ! " she said. 
 
 The door opened, admitting a handsome, stalwart 
 young man of twenty-five or so. His face was tanned 
 by exposure, and he carried his broad shoulders with 
 an air of responsibility that rose to the dignity of au- 
 thority in his frank, manly, somewhat stern face. It 
 was the original of the diver's picture of the wall 
 Phillip Ames, a man placed above his environment by 
 the arduous training of his work and its ample wage. 
 In the decisiveness of his movements, the alertness 
 of his look, the controlled readiness of all his facul- 
 ties, he seemed older than his years. But his smile 
 was engaging, almost boyish. 
 
 " Good morning," he said in a clear, pleasing voice. 
 
 Jenny had surreptitiously hidden her cigarette un- 
 der the tray of images, and now came forward with a 
 face shining with happiness. 
 
 " Good morning, Phil," she said. " I'm glad to 
 see you." 
 
 Joe looked at his sister-in-law. The confession of 
 her love of a moment ago was corroborated by the 
 adoring look in her eyes. 
 
 26
 
 JENNY MORAN 27 
 
 " Your father stopped at the boarding house a mo- 
 ment ago," explained Phillip. " He says that Benny 
 is sick." 
 
 " Yes, he has been coughing a good deal." 
 
 " That's too bad," returned the diver with the care- 
 less sympathy of a man in perfect health. " Mrs. 
 Binney sent me over with this croup kettle." 
 
 He took a package from under his arm, placed it on 
 the table with the circumspection which those who are 
 used to lifting great weights show when they handle 
 fragile things. He snapped the string as if it were 
 a bit of sewing cotton, undid the brown paper, and 
 with infinite care took out the kettle. Then he depos- 
 ited it on the mantelpiece beside the three clocks. 
 
 " Thanks ! " said Jenny. 
 
 Behind his turned back she motioned Joe to leave 
 the room. 
 
 Joe made a grimace at her, lifted his eyes heaven- 
 ward, puckered up his lips in imitation of a kiss, and, 
 placing his hands over each other on his heart, gave 
 himself a hug. 
 
 Jenny frowned and pointed to the door. 
 
 Her brother-in-law stopped his fooling, and sud- 
 denly became quite businesslike. Here was a chance 
 for a bargain. Corn Cob at fifteen to one ! He must 
 have those two dollars. 
 
 So, just as Phillip turned, he significantly held up 
 two fingers. 
 
 Jenny nodded eagerly. 
 
 " Shall I get that medicine you wanted ? " he asked 
 with tender solicitude. 
 
 " Yes. Here's the money."
 
 2 g THE BATTLE 
 
 She produced her purse, always carefully guarded, 
 often strenuously defended, and handed over the 
 money. It nearly left her penniless for the rest of the 
 week, but what did she care ? To be alone with Phil ! 
 
 Joe hung his battered derby hat over his right eye, 
 and gave what he thought was an imitation of a heavy 
 swell striding up Fifth Avenue, then changed suddenly 
 to a more realistic one of a jockey bending over his 
 mount's neck in the home stretch. In the doorway he 
 turned, took off his hat, bowed deferentially, and passed 
 out. 
 
 " Funny fellow," said Phillip in an enigmatic tone. 
 
 " I wish he would go to work," answered Jenny, 
 seating herself at the table to resume her work. She 
 pulled the tray forward a little more, in order to hide, 
 completely, the cigarette she had been smoking. 
 
 The young diver took a chair near her. Under his 
 gaze she became confused, dropped her brush, and 
 looked up, meeting his clear, deep-blue eyes timidly. 
 She saw his fine head, his bronzed, muscular neck, ex- 
 posed by the turn-down collar of his flannel shirt, his 
 straight, broad shoulders the physical perfection of 
 this man who was her demigod. A wave of passion- 
 ate, yet worshipful, admiration swept over her. She 
 realized that her love for him was the deepest, most 
 sacred feeling she had ever known. 
 
 He laughed a little, embarrassed by the intensity of 
 her gaze. 
 
 "Will you mind if I smoke?" he asked. 
 
 " You know I don't, Phil ; I love a good cigarette." 
 
 He had already placed a cigarette between his lips, 
 and was returning the box to the pocket of his coat.
 
 JENNY MORAN 29 
 
 Now he produced it again, and held it out to her hesi- 
 tatingly, almost unwillingly. 
 
 " You mean you don't want one ? " he said. 
 
 " No, no," she answered hastily. " I have I have 
 given up smoking, you know." 
 
 She looked down at the trembling hands in her lap. 
 Her cheeks burned, tears sprang to her eyes. Every- 
 thing seemed to remind her and him of that brief 
 past which she so regretted, for his sake. It was al- 
 ways thus when they were together. A chance word, 
 innocently spoken, always brought up what she wished 
 that she could forget, still more that she could make 
 him forget. 
 
 That was her punishment, she often told herself. It 
 had given the resigned droop to her mouth. But must 
 it last? Was there to be no forgiveness for her? Her 
 heart rose in indignation. Then a sudden thought 
 gave her an added stab of pain. She had lied to him, 
 meanly, despicably. To appear worthier in his eyes, 
 she had refused his proffered cigarette she had told 
 him that she had given up smoking. And under the 
 tray before her, within reach of his hand, lay the 
 crushed butt she had been enjoying, with all the eager 
 relish of the confirmed cigarette fiend, at the moment 
 of his knock. 
 
 Joe had given it to her, Joe who was always tempt- 
 ing her in little things; Joe who had never scrupled 
 to accept her aid in those days she could not forget ; 
 Joe who had told her but a moment ago that she was 
 a fool! 
 
 She looked up. Phillip was smoking with the uncon- 
 cern of their class, which is not made uncomfortable
 
 30 THE BATTLE 
 
 by oases of silence in the desert of millions of grains 
 of small talk. He smoked well, with unconscious 
 grace, slowly, appreciatively, enjoying a sensuous 
 pleasure, not indulging an uncontrollable craving. 
 
 She fell to watching his hand as it put the little roll 
 of paper and tobacco to his lips. It was a beautiful 
 hand, far more shapely than she realized, muscular yet 
 slender the hand of a gentleman. 
 
 Phil looked at her for a little while longer in silence, 
 then said easily : 
 
 " Well, and how are things going? " 
 
 " Rotten, thank you." 
 
 Her tone was the essence of insurgent bitterness. 
 
 The man leaned forward sympathetically, his elbows 
 on his knees. 
 
 " Don't you feel er happier ? " he asked softly. 
 
 Her self-control gave way. What was the use of 
 keeping straight? What was her reward? Misery, 
 slavery, and unrequited love! Kind always, helpful, 
 too, he seemed to keep her at arm's distance, if, indeed, 
 he was aware at all of what she felt for him. So she 
 burst out: 
 
 " Happier ? This is where I live, in one of John J. 
 Haggleton's tenements ! Do you see anything here to 
 make me happier? I get up at five, I cook and scrub 
 and wash, and paint these plaster creatures with that 
 gilt stuff for ten hours a day ! At six cents per dozen ! 
 Do you see anything in that to make me happier ? " 
 
 The man, unaware that he himself was the cause of 
 this outbreak, looked at her in helpless distress. He 
 was dumfounded. He had fancied that this brand 
 snatched from the burning was at least grateful for
 
 JENNY MORAN 31 
 
 her escape, even if not happy as yet, with that past to 
 haunt her sleep and embitter her waking hours. And 
 now she seemed to regret what she had given up so 
 readily, so easily, so gladly! 
 
 He felt staggered, frightened. Then, desirous more 
 than ever to be of help, to make easy for her those 
 early steps which appeared to be so unexpectedly hard 
 and difficult, he said very gravely : 
 
 " You must be glad that you have given up the old 
 life? You are doing right, anyhow." 
 
 She looked at him almost with scorn. A kiss, a 
 caress, nay, a mere touch of the hand would have 
 quieted her, would have rewarded her for these weeks 
 of colorless existence, for the extreme bodily fatigue 
 and the ravening heart-hunger. A single word of 
 affection would have given her courage and strength 
 to persevere, and here he was preaching to her, assur- 
 ing her that she was " doing right ! " 
 
 By a sudden revulsion of feeling Jenny became 
 apathetic, then resentful. 
 
 "Doing right?" she echoed scornfully. "Who 
 cares whether I do right ? " 
 
 " Don't say that, Jenny. You know we all care." 
 
 " All? Who, all? " she persisted. " Does Joe Caf- 
 f rey care ? Nit ! He'd rather have me go back to the 
 old life, so he could work me for a ten or a twenty 
 when he was broke ! Oh, I guess yes ! " 
 
 She saw him wince, and, womanlike, though every 
 word was a stab to her, she poured out upon him the 
 slang of the streets. She painted herself blacker than 
 she was, assumed a callousness that had never been 
 hers even in her most reckless days. She gave full
 
 3 2 THE BATTLE 
 
 sway to the unreasonable, the unreasoning impulse to 
 hurt him, to hurt herself, in revenge for the injustice 
 of fate. 
 
 He listened in motionless silence, pale, a look of pain 
 in his eyes. Unversed in the ways of women, he failed 
 to understand, and when her mood had run its course, 
 and was succeeded by another revulsion of feeling, his 
 bewilderment only grew. 
 
 She sat quiet now but for her trembling ringers, 
 nervously jerking and twisting at her dress, and 
 the quivering of her lip, which she bit viciously, with 
 her small white teeth. She stared stonily before her, 
 but her eyes were dry. If she had only wept, his 
 task might have been easier. His understanding of 
 women did not go beyond tears. 
 
 " Then," he stammered at last, " then ... it 
 is only your promise to Liz that makes you do this ? " 
 
 There was scorn in her eyes, the age-old scorn of 
 the woman for the blundering, purblind male. 
 
 " It isn't even that," she explained patiently. " Yes, 
 I promised Liz that I would keep straight but Liz 
 is dead; she'd never know what I do, or if she 
 did know she would see that this life is too hard 
 for me." 
 
 She looked around the miserable room, and con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " The only thing that keeps me from going 
 back " 
 
 " Don't say that." 
 
 " It's true, Phil, it's true. The only thing is ... 
 I don't want to make you feel bad. That's the only 
 reason."
 
 JENNY MORAN 33 
 
 She fixed upon him her eloquent dark eyes, and 
 asked softly, with infinite longing: 
 
 " It would make you feel bad, wouldn't it, Phil ? " 
 
 " It certainly would, Jenny." 
 
 " I know," she said gratefully, " I know Liz died 
 only three weeks ago, but it seems a year. She made 
 us both kneel down by her bed. I had on a big hat 
 with red feathers. You remember? Then she made 
 me promise, and she made you promise to help me." 
 
 " I'll keep my promise. I'll help you." 
 
 Jenny continued to stare straight before her, into 
 that near past that already seemed so far, so very 
 far away. She continued musingly: 
 
 " I guess she thought that I might do it for you. 
 She knew how much I have always cared for you; 
 always, Phil, ever since we were little kids together." 
 
 She paused a moment, then added with soft regret, 
 in which there lay a world of meaning : 
 
 " Ah, if I hadn't married George ! " 
 
 "Jenny!" 
 
 " Well, it spoiled my life all right. It's true. My 
 life ! Look at it ! I say I have never had a chance ! " 
 
 She struck the table with her open hand, and looked 
 straight into his eyes. 
 
 Phillip, touched, bent toward her and answered: 
 
 " You have a chance now, Jenny." 
 
 The words aroused in her a false hope. Could it 
 be ? She leaned nearer him, her face close to his. 
 
 " You used to think me pretty," she whispered. 
 " Phil you couldn't, you wouldn't " 
 
 He hastily shrank back, and then instantly regretted 
 the impulsive action. But Jenny had understood,
 
 34 THE BATTLE 
 
 " What a fool I am ! " she cried. " How can you 
 care for me when you love another woman ? I know ! 
 Oh, I know!" 
 
 Phillip rose to his feet. 
 
 " What do you know ? " he asked sternly. 
 
 " I know that you are struck on that girl, that 
 trained nurse at the boarding house." 
 
 " Miss Lawrence ? Who has told you ? " 
 
 " No one has told me. I am a woman." 
 
 She glanced at him searchingly, and read the truth 
 in his face. Controlling the pain at her heart, hiding 
 the desolation that had suddenly blighted her life, she 
 asked question after question, bravely taking each 
 blow that came with the assenting nod of the head 
 which was his only answer. 
 
 " Have you asked her yet ? Did you ask her last 
 night ? And she said ' Yes ' ? I want you to be happy, 
 Phil I congratulate you." 
 
 She, too, had risen. She was pale, but quiet. Her 
 voice did not falter as she went unflinchingly on to the 
 end of her ordeal. 
 
 " You won't be different with me, now that you are 
 in love ? " 
 
 " Of course not, Jenny." 
 
 " We'll be friends just the same? " 
 
 " You bet we will ! " 
 
 He held out his hand, which she shook like a loyal 
 comrade. Then she added pathetically : 
 
 " Because that's all I have in the world your 
 friendship, Phil." 
 
 The final, the most difficult question had been 
 reached. She asked it without a tremor.
 
 JENNY MORAN 35 
 
 "And you won't tell her?" 
 
 " You mean about " 
 
 " About my past life, yes. She is a good girl, and 
 a good girl never forgives." 
 
 " She's a splendid, broad-minded girl," he pro- 
 tested ; " she would " 
 
 " Perhaps she would. But I'd be ashamed if she 
 knew. Don't you see ? " 
 
 " You're right, Jenny ; I'll not tell her." 
 
 The woman rose above her environment, her ante- 
 cedents, her past. With natural, unconscious dignity 
 she bowed slightly, and said : 
 
 " Thank you, Phil." 
 
 A step was heard on the stair. It approached the 
 door. 
 
 " Here she is," said the diver, his eyes alight with 
 joy.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 
 
 COME in ! " called Jenny in answer to the knock 
 at the door, which opened to admit Margaret 
 Lawrence, her nurse's uniform partly hidden under a 
 dark coat. 
 
 She was not so tall as Jenny. The two women 
 formed, indeed, a striking contrast. Margaret was 
 dark and vigorous; exquisitely neat in her dress, she 
 carried herself well and had the tranquil assurance of 
 movement and speech of her profession. Jenny, her 
 golden hair piled in a disorderly mass on top of her 
 head, her cheap black gown unfastened at the throat, 
 had the discouraged, indifferent ways of the woman 
 whom poverty has already conquered. 
 
 Just then, having learned that Phillip was lost to 
 her, dejection accentuated this indifference. She 
 slouched forward with the laggard effort of the wom- 
 an overworked and underfed, yet even so there re- 
 mained visible a trace of the careless, unconscious 
 grace that must have distinguished her in better days, 
 that would be hers again in more favorable circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Margaret gave Phillip a dazzling smile, nodded 
 cheerily to Jenny, and said : 
 
 " Good morning." 
 
 She immediately, however, turned to Phillip, who 
 36
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 37 
 
 took her hand, pressed it, and said, forgetful of all but 
 his new-found happiness: 
 
 " How beautiful you look this morning ! " 
 
 " You foolish boy have you been thinking of 
 me?" 
 
 Again she smiled. Jenny, to whom the sight of 
 their frank delight in each other was torture, made an 
 involuntary movement. Phillip, bending forward to 
 kiss Margaret, shrank back, turned around and said : 
 
 " I beg your pardon I forgot. Margaret, I want 
 you to know my old friend, Jenny Moran Miss Law- 
 rence." 
 
 Jenny nodded. 
 
 " Happy to make your acquaintance," she said, but 
 her tone was hostile. 
 
 She could not bear to see these two together, she 
 could not bear to think of leaving them there alone. 
 What should she do? She went slowly, uncertainly 
 over to the hatstand, trying to make up her mind. The 
 sound of a kiss, faint imaginary, perhaps drove her 
 to a decision. She snatched her hat from its peg, 
 pinned it on her head with trembling, fumbling 
 fingers, slipped into her coat cheap finery that she 
 had brought back with her out of her past, and that 
 looked already draggled and worn and said, with 
 feverish decision : 
 
 " Sorry that I can't stay, but I must be at the factory 
 at eight." 
 
 Margaret looked at her, a little astonished at her 
 curt tone, but she answered readily : 
 
 " I will write down the instructions for the treat- 
 ment of the child."
 
 3 8 THE BATTLE 
 
 " All right," said Jenny, almost insolently. " Good- 
 by." 
 
 She stared for a moment into her unconscious rival's 
 eyes, then left the room, slamming the door behind 
 her. 
 
 " She's a little crude sometimes," explained Phillip 
 apologetically, " but she has a good heart." 
 
 " She is very pretty. If she were properly dressed 
 and took care of her hair " 
 
 " She has had a very hard life. I'd be glad, dear, 
 if you er if you would be a little kind to her." 
 
 " Of course I will, Phillip." 
 
 Then, with a look at the door which had been 
 closed so noisily but a moment before, she added, half 
 sadly, half whimsically: 
 
 " That is, if she will allow me to." 
 
 " Allow you to be kind to her ? Why, Margaret, of 
 course." 
 
 " She certainly did not make any advances. And 
 if you could have seen the look she gave me just now 
 as she went out ! " 
 
 Margaret shook her head with a puzzled frown. 
 Then she laughed. 
 
 " Is there anything else I can do to make you 
 glad ? " she asked coquettishly. 
 
 Their eyes met ; Jenny was forgotten. 
 
 Phillip drew her, unresisting, into his arms. 
 
 " It does not seem possible," he whispered ; " it is 
 too wonderful." 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " You this." 
 
 He strained her to him.
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 
 
 39 
 
 " I am not wonderful, Phillip ! I am just a lonely 
 little trained nurse." 
 
 " Are you lonely now ? " 
 
 " Now ? No, dear. Never, never again." 
 
 She looked up into his eyes, and offered him her 
 tenderly smiling mouth. He kissed her fondly, 
 reverently, thankfully. Thus they stood for sev- 
 eral moments, silent, in the exquisite joy of their 
 young love. 
 
 The woman was the first to return to the present 
 and the work at hand. She regretfully freed herself 
 from his clasp, and pushed him from her with gentle 
 resolution. 
 
 " This is most unprofessional," she said, trying to be 
 severe. " I am here to look after a sick child." 
 
 She glanced about the room, alert and businesslike. 
 
 " Where is the patient ? " she asked. 
 
 " In there. Do not go in yet, Margaret." 
 
 She temporized half unwillingly. Her eyes took in 
 every detail of the neglected, disorderly room. 
 
 Articles were thrown at haphazard on the floor that 
 might just as well be hanging from nails, a frying pan 
 had the grease of yesterday's meal still sticking to it, 
 there were coffee grounds in the sink that might stop 
 up the drain, the floor was unswept. Margaret longed 
 to set to work, but she remembered that she was only 
 a visitor in the house of Phillip's friends. 
 
 She sighed a little, but contented herself with saying: 
 
 " This is one of John J. Haggleton's tenements, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes. He is Moran's landlord. You should hear 
 him talk about Haggleton, the robber."
 
 40 THE BATTLE 
 
 "And this is 'Lung Block'?" 
 
 " It is." 
 
 " And that little child is coughing already ? No 
 wonder. In such an atmosphere! Phillip, can you 
 open one of the windows ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear. But wait one moment. I want to 
 talk to you. I thought of something last night after 
 I left you. I didn't sleep very well." 
 
 She turned to him, the direct personal interest fully 
 awake again. 
 
 " I did not sleep very well either," she announced 
 demurely. " Such sympathy ! I was thinking seri- 
 ously." 
 
 " About the future our future ? So was I." 
 
 " I wasn't so very serious I was happy." 
 
 She seated herself in Jenny's chair by the table, 
 Phillip taking the one he had occupied when the poor 
 girl had made her confession to him. 
 
 " But it is serious, too," he began. " Just think we 
 meet in a boarding house where I belong and you do 
 not. Naturally I fall in love with you because you 
 are a splendid, beautiful girl yes, you are and all of 
 a sudden, bang! you have promised to marry me." 
 
 She glanced at him curiously. 
 
 " Why do you say that I do not belong in a board- 
 ing house ? " 
 
 " Because you are a lady. You never lived in a 
 boarding house before, did you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You were never brought up in the expectation of 
 having to earn your own living ? " 
 
 " No. My father was ruined in business, and I had
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 4I 
 
 to choose between marriage and earning my own 
 living." 
 
 " I knew it," said Phillip with quiet conviction. 
 " That is what I was thinking about last night. And 
 I want to tell you, darling, that you have made no mis- 
 take." 
 
 He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his 
 knees, his muscular hands clasped together be- 
 fore him. 
 
 " You have made no mistake," he repeated. " I 
 I never loved a woman before, and this your love 
 means everything to me. I am only a workingman, 
 but I am going to rise. It's in me. I know it, and 
 if you will trust me " 
 
 She touched his clasped hands, and said with tran- 
 quil faith: 
 
 " I do trust you, Phillip, dear." 
 
 " I feel that I can do anything, if I have you to 
 work for anything! I have had a wonderful feeling 
 of power lately, since I have come to love you " 
 
 He stumbled a little in his words, self-conscious, 
 awkward in this process of self-revelation to his first, 
 his only love. Then suddenly, taking courage and in- 
 spiration from her face, he straightened up, threw 
 wide his arms, and promised exultingly : 
 
 " Margaret, I will gain the big prizes for you the 
 money prizes of this world, if you want them." 
 
 " I do not want money, Phillip. That is why I took 
 up nursing, because my family insisted on my marry- 
 ing a stupid idler who happened to be rich." 
 
 " Listen, dear," she confessed, her face glowing with 
 her intensity ; " I love you because you are working
 
 42 THE BATTLE 
 
 for something better than money because you have 
 high ideals, and because you give time and thought to 
 helping the poor." 
 
 " We will help the poor in a big way, you and I, 
 before we get through," he promised her with a 
 radiant smile. Then, with deep feeling, he continued : 
 " It makes me wild to think of the luxury and misery 
 right here in New York City." 
 
 And she repeated, with the same quiet intensity: 
 
 " That's what makes me love you, dear." 
 
 They were silent for a while, lost in the vision of 
 what they, from the vantage ground of their united 
 lives, could do for the common good. 
 
 A whistle, sharp, short, characteristic, sounded in 
 the street. Phillip suddenly stood alert. 
 
 " That's Gentle's signal," he announced " you 
 know, dear, my friend at the boarding house ? " 
 
 " He has a fine face. I like him." 
 
 " He has been like a father to me. I owe every- 
 thing to him. My real father " 
 
 He broke off abruptly, his face clouding over. 
 Then, recovering himself, as he heard his friend's 
 step in the hall, he opened the door and ushered 
 him in. 
 
 Gentle entered, took off his cap, and bowed to Mar- 
 garet. He was a middle-aged man, stockily built, and 
 tanned by exposure to all kinds of weather. His blue 
 pea-jacket, dark trousers, and heavy boots suggested 
 the seafaring man. 
 
 In reality he was a diver, like Phillip, and it was 
 under his guidance that Phillip had learned the trade 
 of which he was now an acknowledged master. What
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 43 
 
 Margaret had just said of Gentle was true. He had 
 a fine, manly face, thoughtful and kindly, yet strong 
 withal the face of a man whom women and children 
 would love, and men would trust. 
 
 " I am glad to find you, Phillip," he said. " Good 
 morning, Miss Lawrence." 
 
 The girl gave him her hand and returned his salu- 
 tation. 
 
 " I have just seen the captain," continued the old 
 diver, turning again to Phillip. " He says you can 
 have the day off." 
 
 "But the barge in the East River?" objected the 
 young man. 
 
 " She lies in thirty feet of water. Atkinson and I 
 can get the chains under her when the tide turns." 
 Then he added, glancing at Margaret with an apolo- 
 getic smile : " I told the captain this was a special day 
 for you." 
 
 " Does Mr. Gentle know ? " she whispered to Phillip. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know, Miss Lawrence ; Phillip has no 
 secrets from me and such a secret ! " 
 
 He stretched out his corded, wrinkled hands to 
 them, and exclaimed with a lonely man's fondness: 
 
 " My children ! You know," he added in explana- 
 tion to the girl, " he is like a son to me." 
 
 " Then I will be like a daughter," she rejoined 
 sweetly. 
 
 " My daughter Margaret ! " Gentle exclaimed. 
 Then he added with tender reverence : " It was the 
 name of Phillip's mother. She would be very happy at 
 the choice her son has made." 
 
 " Gentle," Phillip broke in, " I wish you would tell
 
 44 THE BATTLE 
 
 Margaret about the night when you first saw my 
 mother." 
 
 " You think Margaret ought to know ? " 
 
 " Yes, I wish her to know." 
 
 They sat down, the girl between them, her hand in 
 her lover's. 
 
 " It was twenty-two years ago," began Gentle halt- 
 ingly; "a wild night, and bitter cold. Mrs. Binney 
 (I have boarded with her for more than twenty-five 
 years) Mrs. Binney and I were playing checkers in 
 the basement sitting room, when all of a sudden we 
 heard the bell. ' Sakes alive, who's that?' said Mrs. 
 Binney. ' I'll go and see,' said I. And when I opened 
 the door, there stood a woman in the storm holding a 
 little boy by his hand, and she was white as death. 
 ' God have mercy,' said I, ' what are you doing out in 
 a night like this ? ' ' We are in great trouble,' said 
 she. ' Come in,' said I, ' in the name of God ! ' and in 
 they came, and I saw that the little boy was so cold 
 that the tears were frozen on his face. That little 
 boy was Phillip." 
 
 With an exclamation of pity and love Margaret 
 looked at Phillip. She almost felt as if he must still 
 be cold and suffering, and pressed his hand reassur- 
 ingly. 
 
 " He was then barely four years old," concluded 
 Gentle. 
 
 " And to this day I have never heard what sent my 
 mother out into the storm," Phillip added. 
 
 " She never told you ? " Margaret looked thought- 
 ful. 
 
 " She died with her secret unspoken, unless "
 
 PHILLIP AND MARGARET 
 
 45 
 
 the young man turned to his friend and looked at 
 him inquiringly " unless, Gentle, I have sometimes 
 thought that my mother told you her secret." 
 
 The old man hesitated. Then he admitted: 
 
 " She told me a little, Phillip." 
 
 " And you have kept it from me ? " 
 
 " There were things which she did not wish you 
 to know." 
 
 Phillip looked grave. He glanced at Gentle, then 
 at Margaret, and asked peremptorily: 
 
 " Is this thing you are keeping back something that 
 this girl who is going to be my wife ought to know ? " 
 
 " It is not." 
 
 Phillip gave a sigh of relief. Turning to Margaret, 
 he explained: 
 
 " It is something about my father some trouble be- 
 tween him and my mother, isn't it, Gentle ? " 
 
 " Don't ask me about your father, my boy ! " 
 
 Before Phillip could reply, Emmy entered the room 
 from Jenny's sleeping closet, grasped a chair and be- 
 gan to drag it behind her. 
 
 " You little tot ! " exclaimed Margaret, " what do 
 you want that chair for ? " 
 
 " We're play in' yacht, lady." 
 
 " Oh, you are playing yacht ? " 
 
 " I'm the captain. We're chasin' enemies." 
 
 " And your little brother? " 
 
 " He is John J." 
 
 "John J.?" 
 
 "Don't you know John J., lady? He's a damned 
 millionaire." 
 
 " Why, Emmy ! " exclaimed Phillip.
 
 46 THE BATTLE 
 
 " That's what Moran says," maintained Emmy 
 stoutly. Turning to Margaret, she continued: 
 
 " Don't you know John J. Haggleton ? He owns 
 everything. He is the landlord of this shack. You 
 ought to hear Benny play John J. ' Bring up the 
 damned Indians and cut off der heads,' he says." 
 
 " That's the Haggleton idea, all right," commented 
 Phillip with a smile. Gentle looked at him with a curi- 
 ous expression. 
 
 Just then the make-believe " John J." began to 
 cough. 
 
 " Oh, my patient, I forgot him ! " exclaimed Mar- 
 garet remorsefully, springing to her feet. 
 
 She grasped Emmy's dirty little hand and darted 
 through the door. 
 
 " Going to the boats now, Gentle ? " asked Phillip. 
 
 " Not yet. I am expecting some one." 
 
 The old man spoke with preoccupation, looking out 
 of the window the while. Phillip inevitably gravitated 
 toward the door through which Margaret had disap- 
 peared. As he closed it behind him, Gentle heard him 
 say : " Let me help you put things to rights here." 
 
 In a few moments Gentle heard the honk-honk of an 
 automobile horn and saw a powerful motor car turn 
 the corner of Market Street a rare apparition there, 
 attracting no end of attention and far from friendly 
 comment. The car stopped in front of the tenement. 
 Gentle went to the door leading into the hall, opened 
 it, and waited. There was a heavy, slow step on the 
 stairs, a woman's shrill voice called out a direction, 
 then Gentle said distinctly: 
 
 "This way, Mr. Haggleton."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 JOHN J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 
 
 GENTLE looked curiously at the man who en- 
 tered the room, and who first glanced sharply 
 around it and then fixed a pair of cold, commanding, 
 penetrating eyes upon him. 
 
 So this was Haggleton the " John J." of daily par- 
 lance, the master of oil fields and coal fields, of iron 
 mines and railroads and steamship lines, of banks and 
 trust companies, the man whose power was felt in 
 Europe and in Asia as in America the chosen subject 
 of the bitterest attacks of social reformers and revo- 
 lutionaries, the man who could afford to fight the gov- 
 ernment of the most powerful country in the world on 
 terms of equality. 
 
 "JohnJ.l" 
 
 Gentle had never seen him, few ever saw him, and 
 yet his face was more familiar to all his countrymen 
 than that of the President himself. The newspaper 
 cartoonists had seen to that. They had represented 
 him as a fox, as a weasel, as a bird of prey, as a bull 
 tossing the strongest opposition on its horns, as a 
 robber baron, a pickpocket, a slave driver, a menacing 
 cloud upon the face of the sun of democracy, as a 
 minotaur devouring women and children, as a living 
 money bag. 
 
 "John J.!" 
 
 47
 
 48 THE BATTLE 
 
 The man who had built up a world-wide industry 
 with nothing at the start but his brains and his health ! 
 The man who had removed from his path all obstruc- 
 tions, who had been loyal to his associates, ruthless to 
 his enemies. The silent man, who never deigned to 
 answer attacks, whose legal weapon was delay, the 
 incarnation of plutocracy for socialism and anarchism 
 to denounce and attack. 
 
 Gentle saw before him a burly man of sixty, gray- 
 haired, with a bristling gray mustache waxed at the 
 ends, a man dressed with unobtrusive taste. 
 
 But it was the face that commanded his attention. 
 The steely eyes had held him from the first. He now 
 noted the stern brow, with the fold between the eye- 
 brows, the iron jaw, the lines at the corners of the 
 grim mouth, the straight, short nose, which suggested 
 Kitchener. 
 
 It was a face cut out of granite, which imposed im- 
 plicit obedience. It suggested mastery, tranquil assur- 
 ance, but it was not aggressive; this man had been 
 accustomed too long to absolute and immediate obedi- 
 ence. 
 
 All the sins of modern industry and commerce were 
 charged to him. He went on his way, ever organiz- 
 ing, ever enlarging his empire of power and industry, 
 and commerce grew and flourished with them. A 
 force for evil, they said, and yet a giver of bread, 
 honestly earned, to tens of thousands of men. 
 
 But the old diver, accustomed to picking strong, 
 healthy men for the dangerous work of which he had 
 charge, saw something else, which the cartoonists 
 failed to suggest in their drawings. He saw, as plainly
 
 J. J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 49 
 
 as John J.'s famous physician had seen, that the mil- 
 lionaire was not a well man. The pallor of his face, 
 the color of his eyeballs, the wrinkled circles beneath 
 them, the momentary scantness of breath, all this told 
 its tale to Gentle. And he saw also that John J. Hag- 
 gleton, with all his wealth and power, was not a happy 
 man, not even a contented one. 
 
 Gentle noticed all this in the few seconds which Hag- 
 gleton devoted to that first sharp glance around the 
 Morans' abode. Nothing escaped the millionaire's at- 
 tention. The evidence of poverty he hardly heeded ; 
 he had been prepared for that, but the discouraging 
 disorder, the lack of system and of cleanliness, was 
 registered on his master mind. 
 
 His eyes flashed a little as he growled : 
 
 " Of all filthy places ! " 
 
 " It's one of your tenements, Mr. Haggleton," said 
 Gentle pointedly. " I wanted you to see it." 
 
 " You did ? That's not the point." Then briskly : 
 " You said you had papers to show me." 
 
 " So I have, so I have." 
 
 Gentle pointed to the chair in which Margaret had 
 been sitting, drew Phillip's to the other side of the 
 table, and sat down with great composure. 
 
 " I have very little time," continued the master of 
 millions aggressively. " My auto is waiting, and my 
 yacht, too, with guests aboard. I told you that I sail 
 within an hour." 
 
 " On a long cruise. I read it in the papers. That's 
 why I wrote to you yesterday." 
 
 Haggleton's eyes were everywhere. They kept 
 Gentle under constant surveillance, yet at the same
 
 50 THE BATTLE 
 
 time watched every nook and corner of the room, the 
 dark space beneath the beds, the door of Jenny's sleep- 
 ing closet. His secretary was at the head of the stairs 
 without, his mechanician in the hallway below. Al- 
 though he had given no orders, he knew that they were 
 there. Utterly fearless, he nevertheless did not intend 
 to be caught in a trap. Gentle's face, however, sug- 
 gested no danger of this kind. 
 
 " I sail in an hour," repeated Haggleton. " We 
 could have settled this business at my office or at my 
 house." 
 
 " You are mistaken, Mr. Haggleton. The place to 
 settle this business I have with you is here." 
 
 " I came because what you wrote me is important 
 if true. Where are your proofs ? " 
 
 Gentle drew a bundle of papers from the inner pock- 
 et of his pea-jacket, ran over them, selected several 
 letters and handed them to the millionaire. Then he 
 leaned back and waited, watching him narrowly in his 
 turn. 
 
 Haggleton took the first letter, opened it, and 
 glanced at it. He shot a curious glance at the respect- 
 able-looking workingman seated opposite him, and 
 opened a second one. 
 
 This he read carefully, the pallor of his face increas- 
 ing as he read. But his hand did not tremble, and he 
 showed no outward sign of perturbation. Only, after 
 he had perused this paper, and before he went into the 
 third, he fixed Gentle with a prolonged stare. Black- 
 mail ? Oh, well, he would see about that ! 
 
 He carefully went over the remaining letters one by 
 one, examined the handwriting, and at last exclaimed :
 
 J. J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 5I 
 
 " My wife! It's her handwriting! Then you knew 
 her?" 
 
 " I knew her for years." 
 
 Haggleton bent forward, the bundle of papers 
 crushed between his clenched hands. A rapid, nerv- 
 ous twitch of the left side of the face was the only 
 outward expression of his feeling, but to those who 
 knew him it would have signified much. Gentle sat 
 perfectly silent, waiting for him to speak again. 
 
 " Margaret ! " murmured Haggleton musingly, ten- 
 derly. " Margaret ! After twenty-two years ! " 
 
 He mastered himself with an effort, and sat up 
 straight in his chair, the commander of men again. 
 There was a battle before him, a battle over a secret, 
 and for a secret the solution of the mystery of his 
 private life. It behooved him to move cautiously at 
 first. Ultimately he would hold all the tricks, of 
 course. He always did! This man might know a 
 great deal; and, again, he might have merely stum- 
 bled upon the outer circle of the mystery. Moreover, 
 there was a third life involved, far more precious 
 to Haggleton, after all these years, than his vanished 
 wife's. 
 
 His first question was asked quietly, almost indiffer- 
 ently : 
 
 " How was my wife living when you knew her ? " 
 
 " In the boarding house where I was. She had a 
 little money, but it did not last long. Then she tried 
 to work, but it was not easy, and I was earning 
 good wages, and I helped her." 
 
 Haggleton's mind seized upon this point, and regis- 
 tered it in its usual orderly manner. The attempt to
 
 52 THE BATTLE 
 
 establish a pecuniary claim had come earlier in the 
 interview than he had expected. Clumsy fellow, this 
 Gentle! But not a muscle of his face changed, and 
 his voice was smooth and quiet as he asked : 
 
 " You say you helped her ? " 
 
 Gentle nodded, and answered in a low voice : " Yes." 
 
 " You helped her. Did she ask you for assistance ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then why did you help her? " 
 
 " Because I loved her." And lower still he added : 
 " I wanted her to marry me." 
 
 Haggleton was staggered for once. 
 
 " Good God ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " That's how she came to tell me her story," con- 
 tinued Gentle. 
 
 " She told you her story ? What did she tell you ? 
 What did she say about me ? " 
 
 The three questions succeeded each other rapidly, 
 sharply. 
 
 " She said," returned Gentle distinctly, " that you 
 were cruel." 
 
 "To her?" 
 
 " That in your dealings you were consumed with 
 greed for money. That is why she left you." 
 
 " Greed for money ! " 
 
 Haggleton ruminated upon this for a little while, 
 then added mechanically: 
 
 " And that is why she left me." 
 
 He thrust the thought away from him with a slight 
 movement of the head, scrutinized his opponent's face 
 again, and went on to the more important question still 
 to be solved.
 
 J. J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 53 
 
 " Was she was she living alone ? " he asked. 
 
 Gentle met his look squarely, and answered briefly: 
 
 " No." 
 
 "She was not?" 
 
 " She had with her a child your son." 
 
 The millionaire leaned back in his chair. This man 
 was no impostor, he felt sure of that. His desire to 
 know the truth, which he had sought for twenty years, 
 and his accurate judgment of the man before him, 
 counseled him that it was safe to proceed with less 
 caution now. Therefore he asked point-blank : 
 
 " Why did she take my son with her ? Why did 
 she steal him and hide him from me ? " 
 
 " To save him from your influence. He was her 
 son, too. She wished him to be an honest man." 
 
 " Who says that I am not an honest man ? " 
 
 " Your wife said so." 
 
 Haggleton waved this aside impatiently, as of no 
 moment. 
 
 " I want to know about my son," he commanded im- 
 periously. Then, his voice breaking with emotion : " Is 
 he is he alive ? " 
 
 " Living and well ! " 
 
 " My son ! My son that was lost and is found again. 
 I am to see him," he added in an eager whisper. " I 
 am to see him now ! " 
 
 He mastered this softened mood and became his 
 usual strong self again. The moment of assertion, of 
 command, had come. He turned his steely eyes upon 
 Gentle, and said with hidden menace: 
 
 "Where is he? Why don't you send for him? 
 Now, at once."
 
 54 
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 " You will see him presently." 
 
 The two looked at each other. Haggleton's first 
 suspicion suggested itself again. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, " you want to make terms. You 
 want money ? " 
 
 " No, I don't want money." 
 
 " Come, come, I understand. That's perfectly nat- 
 ural. You have done me a service, a great service. 
 You have given me my son " 
 
 Not yet " 
 
 " I say you have done me a service, and it's only 
 right that I should pay for it, and pay handsomely." 
 
 " If I wanted money, Mr. Haggleton, I should have 
 asked for it long ago. I have known this for twelve 
 years I sent you word of her death " 
 
 " Ah ! It was you ! You covered your tracks well. 
 It is you who have kept my son from me for twelve 
 years ! " 
 
 " It was his mother's wish her command ! " 
 
 " Her command ? Then why have you told me 
 now? Why have you brought me here? If you don't 
 want money, what the devil do you want ? " 
 
 " Let me finish my story, and you will understand. 
 Your wife lived among the poor. She saw want and 
 suffering face to face, and it was her dream that some 
 day your son should make atonement for his father's 
 wrongdoing." 
 
 "Atonement?" 
 
 Both men had risen now, facing each other with 
 growing excitement. 
 
 " Yes, atonement with your money and through 
 your money, by the right use of it. Some day, when
 
 J. J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 55 
 
 he was strong enough, Phillip was to meet you, to 
 know you as his father. That day has come. That's 
 why I have sent for you." 
 
 Haggleton took a rapid turn of the room, his hands 
 clasped nervously behind him. Returning to Gentle, 
 he said jeeringly: 
 
 " Ah, I see. He is to show me my evil ways, and 
 I am to be converted and fall on his neck. Rubbish ! 
 You have made a prig of him ! " 
 
 " I have made a man of him such a man as his 
 mother wanted him to be." 
 
 The millionaire returned to his purpose. 
 
 " He doesn't live in this hole," he decided with un- 
 erring intuition. 
 
 " Of course not. He lives in a decent boarding 
 house." 
 
 " He knows nothing about " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " What does he do? What can he earn?" 
 
 " He is a skilled workman, with the Atlantic 
 Wrecking Company. He is a diver." 
 
 " A diver ? " There was a tone of contempt in his 
 voice. 
 
 " Yes, a master diver. He earns from eight to fif- 
 teen dollars a day, he stands six feet in his stockings, 
 he measures forty-eight inches around the chest, and 
 he has an arm like an iron bar." 
 
 " You don't say ! " Haggleton was smiling now, his 
 eyes shining with pride. Gentle continued : 
 
 " And he has a will of his own. And ideas ! " 
 
 " Ideas ? What sort of ideas ? " There was a sud- 
 den suspicion in the question.
 
 56 THE BATTLE 
 
 " The ideas his mother gave him ideas of justice 
 and kindness. She was a noble woman." 
 
 " Yes, yes," conceded Haggleton impatiently. " She 
 was a noble woman, but she understood nothing of 
 business. She was all wrong about business." 
 
 " She did not believe that one man should make 
 slaves of thousands and take their earnings," an- 
 swered Gentle, his voice almost stern. " Neither does 
 Phillip." 
 
 " Phillip ! She kept his name." 
 
 " She kept his Christian name with the name she 
 assumed. She called him Phillip Ames." 
 
 " You've pumped socialism into him," fumed the 
 millionaire " that's the sort of thing you've taught 
 him, eh?" He added scornfully: "I'll soon change 
 that." 
 
 And as Gentle smiled, he broke out excitedly : 
 
 "You don't think I can?" 
 
 " What I have taught him is little," said the diver 
 quietly, and added with confidence, " but what life 
 and misery have taught him he can never forget. 1 
 tell you he is a man ! " 
 
 " He is my son the son of John J. Haggleton 
 my only son with great things to do in this world ! " 
 
 " Exactly ! The destiny his mother chose for him ! " 
 
 " I mean he will have great interests to protect, a 
 great fortune to handle," protested Haggleton, adding 
 contemptuously : " What will he care for your petty 
 theories when he knows who he is ? " 
 
 " When he knows who he is," said Gentle thought- 
 fully. " Then what ? How often I have asked that of 
 myself! Petty theories! He has learned the noblest
 
 J. J. HAGGLETON MILLIONAIRE 57 
 
 theory ever formulated, Mr. Haggleton, and he'll stick 
 to it, I think." 
 
 " What theory is that? " 
 
 The old diver paused, and then answered with slow 
 seriousness : 
 
 " The theory that it is the duty of the strong to help 
 the weak, not to trample on them." 
 
 At this moment the door of Jenny's room opened, 
 and Phillip entered briskly. He gave a careless 
 glance at Haggleton, murmured, " Excuse me a mo- 
 ment," and began to search for something, rummag- 
 ing in boxes, opening drawers, and grumbling to him- 
 self, his back to the two men. 
 
 " I wish," he said, half aloud, " that the scoundrel 
 who owns this place had to live in it. ... I'd like to 
 make him sleep in that room. . . . Where the devil 
 is that hammer ? " 
 
 " In that pail under the sink," said Haggleton 
 sharply. 
 
 The sudden remark had the result he desired. 
 In astonishment Phillip turned his face full upon the 
 newcomer, thus giving him an opportunity to take 
 a good look at him. Gentle motioned the millionaire 
 to be silent. 
 
 " Thanks," said Phillip, with another curious glance. 
 Taking the hammer, he hastily disappeared into the 
 other room. 
 
 The moment the door had closed behind him, Hag- 
 gleton said excitedly: 
 
 " You need not tell me ! I want no proof. I know 
 the eyes, the chin, especially the eyes! For twenty 
 years I haven't slept without seeing those eyes ! "
 
 58 THE BATTLE 
 
 He started impetuously for the door, but Gentle in- 
 tercepted him. 
 
 " Stop ! " he commanded. " Not yet. If you speak 
 to him now, you will regret it." 
 
 " What is this to you ? He is my son, he is mine ! 
 I have found him! He shall sail with me on my 
 yacht within an hour ! " 
 
 " No, no ! " 
 
 Gentle stood before the door with outstretched arms. 
 
 " Wait," he continued ; " you don't know all yet. 
 Here, read this." 
 
 He produced an envelope from his pocket, and hand- 
 ed it to Haggleton, who snatched it from him and 
 opened it impatiently. It contained two papers. Hag- 
 gleton glanced at the first one, then suddenly sat down. 
 
 " My God ! " he whispered. 
 
 " Now you understand how things are between us," 
 said Gentle. 
 
 " My wife made this document on her deathbed ? " 
 
 " With a clear mind. The doctor attested it." 
 
 " It is a copy of the order I gave that night." Hag- 
 gleton's tone was strangely subdued as he looked at the 
 second paper. 
 
 " The original is in a safe place," said Gentle. 
 " Don't offer me money for it," he added warningly ; 
 " it is not for sale." 
 
 " What are you going to do with it ? " 
 
 " You would not want Phillip to read it ? " 
 
 " No ! A thousand times no ! " 
 
 " Then I will use it to increase your patience. You 
 must be content, Mr. Haggleton, to see your son, and 
 be with him, on my terms ! "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FATHER AND SON 
 
 THE two men stood facing each other the work- 
 ingman quiet, self-possessed, dignified, with not 
 a trace of personal victory or consciousness of his ad- 
 vantage in his face or his manner, intent only upon 
 carrying out the mission entrusted to him by a dying 
 woman ; the millionaire the most powerful man on a 
 continent without a sense of defeat, fully confident of 
 his ultimate triumph, but curious to know the condi- 
 tions under which he would be allowed to claim his 
 own son. 
 
 He knew that he would be obliged to keep the terms 
 of the agreement if his son were to be kept in ig- 
 norance of that dark page in his past life, but what of 
 that? He had the greatest task of his career before 
 him, the task of winning his lost son. It was a new 
 interest, far more potent than any he had known for 
 many years, and he was anxious to begin. 
 
 " You say that I must be content to see my son and 
 be with him only on your terms ? " he asked. 
 
 " You must not make yourself known to him until 
 the right moment comes." 
 
 " Yes," answered Gentle. 
 
 " But how can I see him, or be with him, if he 
 doesn't know who I am ? " 
 
 " That is easy enough. Show an interest in the 
 59
 
 60 THE BATTLE 
 
 problems of poverty, tenement-house reform, and 
 Phillip will spend his days and nights with you." 
 
 " No, no," protested Haggleton ; " I want him to 
 take an interest in my affairs, which will be his. He 
 cannot begin too soon. And I am going away on my 
 yacht. Time is pressing." 
 
 " Phillip will be here when you return from your 
 cruise." There was a trace of irony in Gentle's reply. 
 
 " In three months ? Ah, you have never had a son ! 
 And lost him ! And then found him ! He is going 
 with me on that cruise." 
 
 Gentle shook his head with determination. " It can- 
 not be," he answered ; " I must put my promise to his 
 mother before your feelings. I have loved him for 
 years. I have trained him for a battle with you a 
 great battle that's coming now. And I will see that 
 you start fair." 
 
 "Battle what battle?" 
 
 " A battle," continued Gentle impressively, " be- 
 tween your money and his high purpose. You will 
 try to tempt him I know it. You will try to make 
 him hard and worldly. That's why I have waited until 
 he was a man, his character formed. Even now he's 
 only twenty-six, and he is your son." 
 
 " Just so. He is my son." 
 
 Haggleton's voice was more than confident ; it ex- 
 ulted. 
 
 " Yes, he is your son," Gentle went on, his indigna- 
 tion rising at this note of anticipated victory, " but he 
 is also his mother's son. In a way he is my son, too. 
 Yes, he is ready for the test. I am sure of him." 
 
 " But what do you propose ? My wife's directions
 
 FATHER AND SON 61 
 
 that document put me in your power, but remem- 
 ber that I am a man of large affairs, and that my in- 
 terests are Phillip's own. Let us reach an understand- 
 ing." 
 
 " You are to be interested in the improvement of the 
 condition of the poor. You are not to reveal your re- 
 lationship to Phillip ; you are to assume another name. 
 You will " 
 
 At this moment Phillip entered. 
 
 " I have been trying to make that room fit for the 
 Httle kid to sleep in," he said. " It is a pigsty. Oh, 
 that scoundrel Haggleton! Miss Lawrence says the 
 children should both be sent to the hospital." 
 
 Gentle stepped forward. 
 
 " I want you to know a friend of mine, Phillip," he 
 said, " Mr. Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson is interested 
 in tenement-house problems." 
 
 The young man held out his brawny hand to " Mr. 
 Jackson," who shook it heartily. 
 
 " Pleased to meet you, sir. If you are looking for 
 tenement-house problems, just look around you. You 
 have struck the right place. This is Lung Block. The 
 man who owns it is just starting on a cruise in his 
 million-dollar yacht." 
 
 " You mean Mr. Haggleton ? " asked that worthy. 
 
 " Yes John J. The doctors say he needs a 
 change." Phillip laughed somewhat bitterly. " I 
 wonder what his tenants need ? " 
 
 Haggleton looked around the room once more, tak- 
 ing in every evidence of neglect and dirt. Then his 
 glance fell upon the mantelpiece, with its queer col- 
 lection of timepieces.
 
 62 THE BATTLE 
 
 " You wonder what John J.'s tenants need ? " he 
 said dryly. " I should say that those who live here 
 need more soap and not so many marble clocks." 
 
 " Phillip," said Margaret, half opening the door and 
 looking through it, " where is the croup kettle ? " 
 
 He took it from its place between the " installment 
 clock " and the alarm clock and handed it to her, clos- 
 ing the door. 
 
 Haggleton, who had taken quick notice of her neat 
 appearance and cultured speech, asked with interest: 
 
 "Whom have you got in there? That lady doesn't 
 live here?" 
 
 " No. She's a trained nurse and she's the girl 
 whom I am going to marry." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " Haggleton made no further com- 
 ment. 
 
 As Gentle smiled to himself, he caught a twinkle 
 in Haggleton's eye. He suddenly began to like the 
 man a little better. It made him appear far more 
 human than had his emotion of a moment ago, when 
 he had found his son, for then his tenderness had 
 been mixed with a masterful determination to mold 
 the boy after his own image. 
 
 Phillip, meanwhile, had been turning something over 
 in his mind. 
 
 " Are you a friend of Mr. Haggleton, Mr. Jack- 
 son ? " he asked. " Do you know him ? " 
 
 Why er yes." 
 
 "You know him?" repeated Phillip, half incredu- 
 lous " personally, I mean ? " 
 
 Gentle interfered. 
 
 " Mr. Jackson is associated with Mr. Haggleton in
 
 FATHER AND SON 63 
 
 business," he explained ; " he has been helping him in 
 some schemes for tenement improvement." 
 
 " I'd like to tell Mr. Haggleton a few things about 
 tenement improvement ! " the young man burst out. 
 
 " What, for instance ? " asked the pseudo Mr. Jack- 
 son. 
 
 Phillip was fire and flame at once. He mounted his 
 hobby and was off at a gallop. 
 
 " I'd tell him," he vociferated, " that he owns blocks 
 and blocks on the lower East Side that are in such a 
 lovely state that he might as well be running a factory 
 for turning out " 
 
 Gentle made a restraining movement, checking 
 Phillip, who ended impatiently: 
 
 "Oh, what's the use?" 
 
 " No, go on," urged Haggleton. " I am here to 
 learn. You said ' factory for turning out ' what ? " 
 
 " Thieves and drunkards and wrecks of women," 
 thundered Phillip. He clenched his fists, shook 
 them above his head, then growing more calm, 
 concluded : 
 
 " My God ! why cannot you rich men be decent ? " 
 
 Haggleton, remembering his role of Mr. Jackson, 
 remained calm. He saw a first opening in his cam- 
 paign against Gentle's teachings, and took advantage 
 of it. 
 
 " Mr. Haggleton has rooms to rent and these people 
 want to rent them," he commented with irritating 
 coldness. " Business is business." 
 
 " What a rotten idea ! " Phillip's lips curled scorn- 
 fully. " Lie, steal, plunder people, break their hearts, 
 and if you say ' business is business/ it is all right."
 
 64 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Well said, Phillip," approved Gentle, rubbing his 
 hands. 
 
 " You have been reading the muck-rakers," sneered 
 Haggleton. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " All rich men are robbers ? " queried Haggleton. 
 
 " I don't say that, Mr. Jackson." 
 
 " If I had a daughter she would be a princess ? " 
 
 " Probably." 
 
 " And my son would be a fool ? " 
 
 " No doubt." 
 
 " And reformers care nothing about money ? " asked 
 Haggleton sarcastically. " The editor of the socialist 
 paper takes no interest in his salary, eh ? " 
 
 " Even reformers have to live." 
 
 " Listen to me, young man." Haggleton was in grim 
 earnest now. " Let me tell you something. There 
 isn't a reformer in this country who wouldn't stop re- 
 forming damned quick if he found it was hurting his 
 pocketbook." 
 
 Phillip flared up again. 
 
 " That's false ! " he shouted. " Besides, it has noth- 
 ing to do with the question. The question is where do 
 you get your money, you rich men? Do you earn it? 
 Do you dig it out of the ground ? No. You get it by 
 the toil of man, by the tears of women and children. 
 You get it by grinding human beings down to starva- 
 tion wages and taking the rest, millions and millions 
 that belong to the workers, but go into your fat pock- 
 ets, because you're strong enough and cruel enough to 
 take it, and that's how you get such places as Lung 
 Block, and such monsters as John J. Haggleton."
 
 FATHER AND SON 65 
 
 There was a hasty knock at the door, which was 
 opened almost at the same moment. 
 
 Haggleton's secretary, a man of middle age, neutral 
 mannered, but capable looking, stuck in his head. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, and added, addressing his 
 employer direct : " Mr. Haggleton, you've only a few 
 minutes if you want to sail with this tide." 
 
 Then a strange thing happened. Phillip and Gentle 
 suddenly received the impression that they were in the 
 presence of an irresistible force, which it would be 
 calamitous to withstand. They both felt as if some 
 giant were straining at his chains, bent upon destruc- 
 tion. And yet Haggleton hardly raised his voice, his 
 face barely changed, as he bit out the words : 
 
 " When I want you I'll send for you, Grimes." 
 
 " I I am sorry, sir, I I thought " 
 
 " When I want you I will send for you, Grimes. 
 That will do." 
 
 The man retired hastily. Gentle looked uneasy. He 
 had had his first glimpse of the master will that had 
 beaten down formidable obstacles to make of them the 
 foundations of its fortune. But Phillip's next words 
 recalled him to the new turn affairs had suddenly taken. 
 
 " Are you," said the young man in blank amaze- 
 ment, " are you John J. Haggleton? " 
 
 " That's my name." 
 
 " But " he turned in bewilderment to Gentle 
 " did you think that his name was Jackson ? " 
 
 The old diver looked at the millionaire for aid in 
 this emergency so unexpectedly thrust upon him. 
 
 " No, Phillip. But there was a reason for intro- 
 ducing Mr. Haggleton in that way."
 
 66 THE BATTLE 
 
 " A very simple reason," Haggleton explained 
 smoothly. " I want to study tenement conditions 
 without newspaper notoriety." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Now go on with what you were saying. And, 
 mind you, continue to be frank. I am here to learn." 
 
 " I will be frank, Mr. Haggleton. My answer to 
 you is, what's the use? You can't settle the prob- 
 lems of poverty -while your yacht waits." 
 
 " I can give certain orders, can't I ? I can author- 
 ize certain improvements. Talk quick." 
 
 But Phillip only shook his head. 
 
 " That's the way with you rich people," he com- 
 mented in deep discouragement. " You think that you 
 can settle anything and everything by signing a check. 
 Well, Mr. Haggleton, that is your great mistake the 
 great mistake of all of you. You can't do it. The 
 only real help for the poor comes through love, and 
 you cannot pay some one to love for you. You might 
 as well pay some one to eat for you, or breathe for 
 you, or sleep for you." 
 
 The young man waited for a moment as if search- 
 ing his mind for a closing argument. Then with a 
 flash of inspiration he concluded : 
 
 " You've got to do your loving yourself! " 
 
 Haggleton started, looked at him intently, shifted 
 his gaze to Gentle's face, and repeated thoughtfully, 
 slowly : 
 
 " You've got to do your loving yourself! I never 
 thought of that ! " 
 
 A train of thought had been started in his mind 
 which he tried to follow to its conclusion, while at the
 
 FATHER AND SON 67 
 
 same time he continued the discussion. He would 
 have to do his loving himself! There lay the solu- 
 tion, the way to overcome the influences that had been 
 exerted to array his son against him. 
 
 Aloud, he said: 
 
 " After all, there must be a lot of these poor people 
 who are not worth loving. They bring their misfor- 
 tunes upon themselves. I say that the average man 
 can conquer these tenement conditions if he will work 
 and save and be patient. I know what I'm talking 
 about : I started in a tenement myself." 
 
 " That was years ago," objected Gentle. 
 
 " Conditions have changed since then," added 
 Phillip. 
 
 Haggleton laughed scornfully. 
 
 " The stock argument," he commented, " I have 
 heard it a thousand times. It isn't true. I tell you it 
 isn't true ! " His face became aggressive, his eye 
 lighted up as he continued : " A man with the right 
 stuff in him can win out against poverty just as well 
 to-day as he ever could." 
 
 " A man like Moran ! " Phillip's voice was incredu- 
 lous. 
 
 " Who is Moran ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Your tenant here." 
 
 " He had a small oil business in the West," ex- 
 plained Gentle ; " your system absorbed it." 
 
 " Now he's a baker's assistant," concluded Phillip. 
 
 Haggleton got up again and walked around the 
 room. The thought that was working in his brain 
 was gradually approaching its conclusion. But his 
 eyes were busy, none the less, taking in every
 
 68 THE BATTLE 
 
 evidence of disorderliness, of unnecessary dirt and 
 neglect. 
 
 " Moran can't be much good if this is the way he 
 keeps his place," he announced with decision. 
 
 " He's half sick." It was Phillip who was impa- 
 tient now. 
 
 " So am I half sick, and more than half. I have 
 been half sick for twenty years. Upon my word, I be- 
 lieve that half the work of the world is done by men 
 who are half sick." And he added as an afterthought : 
 " I suppose that the other half is left undone by the 
 men who are well." 
 
 Then he came back to his two companions and 
 asked briefly: 
 
 " How much does Moran earn? " 
 
 " Nine dollars a week." 
 
 " Do you know what I would do in Moran's place? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Phillip viciously. " In Moran's 
 place you'd do about the same as he does." 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 Haggleton made another turn of the room. 
 
 " If I only had time," he muttered to himself. And 
 he added, lower still : " I'll have to do my loving my- 
 self." 
 
 The thought had found its conclusion in the mil- 
 lionaire's brain. 
 
 "Does this junk belong to Moran?" he asked 
 briskly. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Not a bad antique hatstand, that," Haggleton 
 began his inventory, " but it's in the way. We could
 
 FATHER AND SON 69 
 
 get something for it from a dealer if we let him know 
 that we knew. And we ought to get something on 
 these marble clocks. We don't need that sewing ma- 
 chine it looks as if it were never used, anyhow. H'm, 
 I guess we could get thirty dollars on the truck in 
 this room." 
 
 " What are you driving at ? " 
 
 Phillip and Gentle looked at each other in blank 
 amazement. 
 
 " See here," said Haggleton briskly, squaring his 
 shoulders, tightening his jaw, and assuming a com- 
 bative attitude. " See here, you two, are you will- 
 ing to let me prove my contention in my own 
 way ? " 
 
 " That a man with the right stuff in him can win 
 out against poverty just as well to-day as he ever 
 could? Is that what you mean?" asked Phillip. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I am willing," said Gentle significantly. 
 
 Haggleton saw the challenge hidden in the words 
 and nodded emphatically. 
 
 " I don't quite understand," Phillip began cautiously. 
 
 " Get me some paper. I am going to send orders 
 to the captain of my yacht that he sail at once, as 
 arranged, only I shall not be on board." 
 
 " He is to sail without you ? " 
 
 " Without me, and he is to keep away from wire- 
 less-telegraph apparatuses, ports of call, yacht-club 
 stations he is to have no communication with any- 
 one, if possible. If it cannot be helped, he must sig- 
 nal : ' Owner on board. All well.' He will hate to do 
 that, though."
 
 7 o THE BATTLE 
 
 " But " said Phillip, growing more and more bewil- 
 dered. 
 
 " You understand me, Mr. Gentle ? " 
 
 " I think I do, Mr. Haggleton." 
 
 The two elderly men exchanged another look of 
 challenge and understanding. 
 
 " I impose secrecy on both of you," continued Hag- 
 gleton, now blazing with energy. 
 
 " Then you are not going on the yacht ? " hazarded 
 Phillip. 
 
 " No, my young reforming friend, I am going to 
 stay here. I am going to win a little bet I have made 
 with your friend, Mr. Gentle. And I am going to 
 show you what John J. Haggleton would do if he had 
 to hustle in a tenement without a dollar ! "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AN IMPORTANT DECISION 
 
 JOHN J. HAGGLETON, at sixty, had promised 
 that he would show Phillip what he would do 
 what he could do if he had to hustle in a tenement 
 without a dollar! 
 
 He had accepted Gentle's challenge! He was to 
 uproot the old diver's teaching of social discontent 
 and replace it with his own gospel of individualism! 
 
 And he had come to see that he must do his loving 
 himself. The young man must not merely be con- 
 vinced, he must be won! 
 
 The sooner he began the sooner it would be done. 
 Of his ultimate success he had no doubt. 
 
 So he started at once, and Phillip and Gentle, used 
 in their own dangerous work to quick decisions and 
 their even more rapid execution, received their first 
 illustration of the executive ability of a master of 
 industry. 
 
 " I will start fair," said Haggleton briefly to Gentle. 
 " I will keep nothing but the clothes I stand in and 
 two dollars. That's what I started with the first time. 
 Moran started with more than that? Two dollars 
 will suffice for me. My clothes I can sell and buy a 
 suit more fitting for a penniless man looking for a 
 job. The difference in price I will add to my capital.
 
 72 THE BATTLE 
 
 You will have to explain me to Moran, and make him 
 take me as a boarder. I am Mr. Jackson, a small 
 business man ruined by the Trust." 
 
 Then he added to Phillip : 
 
 " Call my secretary." 
 
 The man was just outside the door and entered 
 hastily. 
 
 " I wish to be alone with Mr. Grimes for a few 
 moments." 
 
 Phillip and Gentle withdrew to the hall. 
 
 " Sit down, Grimes," motioned Haggleton, drawing 
 up one of the battered chairs. 
 
 Grimes obeyed with a quick, puzzled glance at his 
 master. Then he looked at his watch. " The yacht 
 was to sail in twenty minutes," he remonstrated; 
 " you will lose the tide." 
 
 Haggleton smiled grimly through half-closed eyes, 
 as Grimes had seen him smile before some master 
 stroke in a great business deal. " Plenty of time ! 
 The fact is, I I'm not going on the yacht." 
 
 " Ah ! Then I'm to countermand the sailing or- 
 ders?" 
 
 Haggleton shook his head. " I said I am not going, 
 but the orders stand." 
 
 " You mean that " 
 
 " I mean that the yacht goes, but I stay here 
 here in this tenement I'm going to live here." 
 
 In the twenty years that he had served this ex- 
 traordinary man, Grimes had received various shocks 
 and faced many strange situations, but nothing in 
 all his experience had equaled this; indeed, for the 
 rest of his life it remained a source of pride to him
 
 AN IMPORTANT DECISION 
 
 73 
 
 that his face betrayed no emotion at this staggering 
 announcement. " I see," he said quietly ; but what 
 he thought he really saw was evidence that this won- 
 derful mind was breaking down. 
 
 This apprehension, however, was immediately re- 
 lieved when the millionaire, in a few sentences, ex- 
 plained the situation and made it clear that he had 
 chosen the only possible course in the circumstances. 
 As to the evidence that Gentle held against him, he 
 did not speak in detail, but he let Grimes understand 
 that he would suffer grave injury if it were made 
 public. Worst of all, if he broke with Gentle now, 
 he would almost certainly lose his son; whereas, by 
 following this way of daily intimacy with him, he 
 hoped to gain such supremacy over the boy in a 
 few weeks that nothing which might afterwards be 
 brought against him would effect a rupture. Haggle- 
 ton said all this in cold, precise words, but Grimes 
 knew that at last something had come near to stirring 
 the heart of this hard and lonely man; he had found 
 his son, and now, at any risk or cost, he proposed to 
 keep him. 
 
 So, without sign of surprise or opposition, this 
 most discerning of secretaries fell in with his mas- 
 ter's wish; indeed, he seemed to find it quite natural 
 that a man whose riches and power were beyond 
 calculation should be adopting the humble existence 
 of a tenement dweller. 
 
 " Will you communicate with me ? " he asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Am I to sail on the yacht?" 
 
 " Of course. You will take my orders and see
 
 74 
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 that they are executed. I shall write a note for 
 the captain, telling him to carry out exactly the in- 
 structions already agreed upon." 
 
 "For a three months' cruise?" 
 
 " Yes. See to it that the news does not get out 
 that I am not on board. Down here there's not one 
 chance in a thousand that I will be discovered, and 
 Grimes, I have another reason for wanting every- 
 one to think me aboard that yacht." 
 
 Grimes looked at Haggleton searchingly. " Another 
 reason besides besides your son ? " 
 
 " Yes. You know how Bates went off yesterday. 
 He hates me, hates me, and he'll pay up somehow, 
 but he'll never stop fighting. Grimes," he lowered 
 his voice, " as soon as those fellows know I'm away 
 on a three months' cruise they'll start some new dev- 
 iltry against me, and " he leaned forward with a 
 cunning smile " it might be amusing and profitable 
 to be right here in Manhattan watching them." 
 
 Grimes nodded admiringly. 
 
 " Run up to the house now and see Wilson before 
 you sail you won't lose more than an hour. Tell 
 him to keep an eye on Bates and his crowd and to 
 send confidential reports every week to Phillip Ames, 
 care of the Atlantic Wrecking Company. Let him 
 put a little circle on the envelopes and I want these 
 reports written as if they were for me." 
 
 " Is Wilson to know that you are here ? " 
 
 " He's to know nothing and think nothing and say 
 nothing." 
 
 Grimes bowed in understanding. " Anything else ? " 
 Haggleton hesitated, and glanced toward the door.
 
 AN IMPORTANT DECISION 75 
 
 " I I'd like to have you see my boy again. Remem- 
 ber him, and if anything should happen to me, why 
 remember him, Grimes, he's my son. That man 
 Gentle has the evidence." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Haggleton leaned closer still and, with more emo- 
 tion than Grimes had ever known him to show, said 
 almost in a whisper : " While I live, you'll never 
 breathe this. I'm trusting you, Grimes, as I never 
 trusted a human being." 
 
 " I thank you, sir, for your your confidence," and 
 he clasped the hand that his master extended. 
 
 Haggleton opened the door. 
 
 " Come in, please," he called. 
 
 Gentle and Phillip entered. Grimes observed the 
 young man closely. Yes, there was no room for 
 doubt this was Haggleton's son the child of the 
 painting in his study. 
 
 " Is everything arranged ? " asked Phillip. 
 
 " Everything except the note to the captain," re- 
 plied Haggleton. " I'll need pen and paper." 
 
 " In that drawer," Phillip pointed. 
 
 The millionaire sat at the bare wooden table and 
 rapidly wrote his instructions. Then he sealed them 
 and addressed the envelope. " There, I think that's 
 all," he concluded, giving it to Grimes. 
 
 The four men stood facing each other. There was 
 a moment of tense silence. 
 
 "Well," remarked the secretary thoughtfully, 
 " we're off on a strange cruise." 
 
 "Does Mr. Grimes sail on the yacht?" inquired 
 Phillip.
 
 7 6 
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Of course," answered Haggleton. " He will see 
 that my orders are obeyed." 
 
 Grimes moved toward the door, but suddenly turned. 
 " Oh," he said, " what shall we do about the chauf- 
 feur? He may talk." 
 
 " Take him with you," decided Haggleton. 
 
 " And the automobile ? " 
 
 " Take that, too." 
 
 A smile broke the tensity of Grimes's look and, with 
 a final good-by, he went out and closed the door. 
 
 " Sit down a minute now, you two," said Haggleton ; 
 " I have one or two things to ask you." 
 
 A remarkable change had come over him ; his eyes 
 were alert, his face firm but good-natured ; he seemed 
 pleased with himself and with things in general. 
 Phillip observed this with surprise. 
 
 " So you want me to taste of poverty ? " said Hag- 
 gleton " to put myself into Moran's place ? " 
 
 " That's it," said Phillip. 
 
 " You want me to see what life would be if I had 
 to face these tenement conditions to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " If I were a poor man here I'd be free to fight 
 the battle of poverty as I pleased, wouldn't I ? " 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " You are willing to let me work this out in my 
 own way, of course ? " 
 
 " Why er I I suppose so, but what is your 
 plan?" 
 
 Haggleton looked Phillip straight in the eyes, and 
 then said with compelling emphasis: 
 
 " I have told you that I am going to show you what
 
 AN IMPORTANT DECISION 77 
 
 John J. Haggleton would do if he had to hustle in a 
 tenement." 
 
 He now turned to Gentle and began to fire rapid 
 questions at him. Moran? A morose man, who 
 ascribed his failure to the iniquity of a trust. Quite 
 so. After his first failure he had simply stopped 
 struggling? Just so. He was a baker's assistant? 
 Could he get " Mr. Jackson " a place in the bakery ? 
 Mr. Jackson thought that he would like to have a 
 try at the bakery business. Jenny? Hard-working, 
 well-meaning, but overwhelmed by her dispiriting en- 
 vironment and the privations of poverty. Inclined to 
 let things run themselves? Know nothing of eco- 
 nomical housekeeping? Of order? Too discouraged 
 to keep things clean? Just as he thought. 
 
 Haggleton looked around the room again. His 
 questions were in reality but affirmations of the con- 
 clusions he had already drawn from the evidence his 
 quick eyes had gathered. 
 
 Joe Caffrey? Light-hearted and shiftless? Char- 
 acter entirely unformed? Unmoral? Well, well, Joe 
 must become their charge. 
 
 In ten minutes John J. knew all he cared to know. 
 As in the organization of his gigantic undertaking, so 
 now here, in this hovel, he had begun by estimating the 
 possibilities of those with whom he would have to 
 deal. During the conversation he had watched his 
 son out of the corner of his eye, and seen the look of 
 interest, growing into admiration, upon his face. Ah, 
 yes, he had made a good beginning. 
 
 Haggleton rose and took a final turn of the room. 
 
 " When I came to this city nearly forty years ago,"
 
 7 g THE BATTLE 
 
 he announced, " this was a clean district. Now it is a 
 dirty one. American cleanliness has been submerged 
 by foreign shiftlessness. Within a week I will have 
 this home of native Americans as neat as a New Eng- 
 land farmhouse." 
 
 Where was he to sleep? Joe Caffrey would be 
 Phillip's guest for a day or two? All right. That 
 nurse had said that the children ought to be in a 
 hospital? All right. Gentle would see to it that they 
 went that very day and get their father's consent? 
 All right. 
 
 Gentle went on his mission, Haggleton accompany- 
 ing him to sell his clothes and buy cheaper ones. 
 Phillip stayed behind to wait for Jenny, to ask her to 
 accept this new boarder and make arrangements for 
 his first night there. 
 
 The young man sat down and lighted a cigarette. 
 He had time now to review the hurried happenings 
 of the preceding two hours. 
 
 What a hustler that man Haggleton was! What 
 decision, what determination! Wouldn't he make a 
 bully master diver? Up to the most dangerous job, 
 full of resources, ready for any emergency! How 
 he'd like to be with him down in fifty feet of water, 
 working together on a bad wreck on a stormy day! 
 Wouldn't they establish some records together ? Why, 
 they would have a wrecking company of their own 
 within a year! 
 
 The spirit of John J. Haggleton, the master of men, 
 the master of his destiny, had begun to stir faintly, 
 dimly, in the breast of his son. Like had called to 
 like for the very first time after twenty years of an
 
 AN IMPORTANT DECISION 
 
 79 
 
 opposing influence, and recognition was already dawn- 
 ing. Yes, Phillip was his father's son! 
 
 Jenny returned home with her basket of images 
 to be gilded, and welcomed an addition to their re- 
 sources in the form of a boarder who would be far 
 less trouble than the two children, and more profitable. 
 Mr. Jackson, Phillip informed her, had seen better 
 days in fact, until quite recently he had lived in easy 
 circumstances. She eagerly accepted his offer to bor- 
 row some clean bed linen and a few towels from his 
 landlady, and with the acceptance of the offer there 
 awoke in her a womanly instinct, long dormant the 
 instinct to have her realm, the home over which she 
 presided, look well in the eyes of a stranger. Mr. 
 Jackson had been used, no doubt, to order and clean- 
 liness. 
 
 Tired as she was, depressed by the knowledge that 
 she had lost Phillip, she began to set the room to 
 rights. It amounted to no more as yet than the 
 covering up of dirt, not its removal, but it was at 
 least a beginning. John J.'s spirit, working at second 
 hand through Phillip, strengthened a hundredfold by 
 her love for the young man, began to exert its in- 
 fluence here, too. She became interested. 
 
 Margaret Lawrence, entering from the inner room, 
 found her energetically at work, arranging her few 
 cooking utensils on the stove, cleaning the sink, mak- 
 ing a distinction between the box that contained the 
 coal and the basket that held the potatoes. Phillip 
 was driving in nails and bringing some order into 
 the box that served as a tool chest. He was willing,
 
 8o THE BATTLE 
 
 but inexperienced ; poor Jenny had no idea of organi- 
 zation, but they did their best. Margaret did not 
 consider it proper to make suggestions outside the 
 sick room. 
 
 The young lovers refrained from all manifestation 
 of their affection, Jenny's secret dread. Moreover, 
 the nurse soon returned to her charges, to prepare 
 them for their visit to the hospital, entertaining them 
 with glowing pictures of the beautiful white beds, the 
 large, quiet rooms, the kind ladies who would come 
 to visit them, and the heavenly sweetness of the nurses 
 " just like herself, and much nicer," she assured 
 Benny, who was most particular and persistent on 
 that point. 
 
 Gentle returned, accompanied by the ambulance. 
 He was a man of standing and much respected in 
 that part of the city. The children were bundled off, 
 with much excitement on their part and many fare- 
 wells, Margaret final treat exacted from her rid- 
 ing with them! 
 
 Jenny retired to her room, and soon returned, her 
 hair neatly done, neatly dressed, a look of interest on 
 her face. Phillip, seeing her, approved, and smiled 
 kindly. That smile sufficed to make her happy for the 
 rest of the day.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 
 
 HAGGLETON now " Mr. Jackson "returned 
 soon after, having sold his expensive clothes 
 and bought with the proceeds a simple suit, better 
 adapted to the role he was to play. 
 
 Jenny shook hands with Mr. Jackson, whom Gentle 
 introduced, and bade him make himself at home. Gen- 
 tle went away. 
 
 The new boarder took off his coat and offered to 
 help. Without waiting for an acceptance of the offer, 
 he began. He was deferential he had " beautiful 
 manners," Jenny concluded asking permission even 
 while he set to work. In this way he brought some 
 order into the chaos of the young woman's domestic 
 economy. It was a mere scraping of the surface, but 
 when it had been accomplished Jenny was firmly 
 convinced that it was she who had made the sugges- 
 tions, Mr. Jackson who had merely carried them out. 
 
 The beds were now on one side of the room, the 
 table stood on the other side, near enough to the stove 
 to suggest a dining room, yet far enough away to 
 serve as the social center of a parlor. Two chairs 
 stood invitingly beside it. The loose handle of her 
 own sleeping closet he called it her " private room " 
 had been secured with a small screw extracted from 
 the mass of nails in the tool box, the rug had been 
 
 It
 
 82 THE BATTLE 
 
 turned with amazing effect, and the shoe brush pro- 
 vided with a piece of string by which to hang it on 
 one of the lower hooks of the hatstand. Mr. Jack- 
 son also had driven several nails in the wall behind 
 the bed the " wardrobe," he explained in jest and 
 wound up, with the aid of a fork, the spring of one of 
 the roller shades, which had been out of order for 
 weeks. 
 
 This was all, he decided, that he could safely ven- 
 ture to do just then. 
 
 " My, but you're handy," said Jenny, glancing 
 around contentedly at the new arrangement of the 
 room, and the various small improvements. 
 
 " Well, you see, Miss Jenny may I call you that ? 
 they all do I am an old bachelor, and used to doing 
 things for myself. You don't mind ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. Glad of it, and thank you. I have 
 so much to do I never seem to get a chance to do 
 any one thing thoroughly." 
 
 " Then you will let me help you from time to 
 time?" 
 
 " You won't have time after you get a job. You 
 will be just as tired then as I." 
 
 " Well, let me try." 
 
 Jenny looked at the alarm clock. 
 
 " Father will be home soon for dinner now," she 
 announced, " and Joe. You know Joe ? " 
 
 " Mr. Gentle has told me about him." 
 
 " He is my brother-in-law. He means well, and I 
 am very fond of him, but oh, well ! " 
 
 She sighed and laughed, then set about the prepar- 
 ations for dinner.
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 83 
 
 Haggleton's heart sank a little as he watched her. 
 He thought of the dyspepsia that had been his burden 
 for nearly twenty years, of the precarious state of 
 his health, which had forced him to consent to his 
 physician's prescription that yachting trip then set 
 his teeth. It was for his son! Moreover, he had 
 lived for so long on nothing but dry toast, and that 
 he certainly could have. Wholesome bread was cer- 
 tainly to be had down in this part of the city the 
 proverbial staff of life of the poor. And why, yes 
 he was going to be a baker, just like Moran! 
 
 Moran arrived, worn out, in a vile humor. Jenny 
 introduced the new boarder to him. 
 
 The baker's assistant looked Mr. Jackson over with 
 listless curiosity, which changed to ill-concealed hos- 
 tility when he saw the neatness of the newcomer's 
 clothes and his well-kept hands. He himself had been 
 like that once! Moreover, the man had an insuffer- 
 able air of distinction. Who and what was he to look 
 like that? Nothing but a failure, endeavoring to find 
 a new foothold in life. 
 
 Moran resolved to establish the proper relations at 
 once. 
 
 " I am Moran," he said, " and you are Jackson. 
 ' Mr.' doesn't go down here." 
 
 " All right, Moran. Jackson it is." 
 
 There fell a silence. Jenny kept busy with her cook- 
 ing. Moran continued to scowl. Jackson looked at 
 the three clocks. 
 
 Joe arrived, having lost Jenny's two dollars, but 
 cheerful as ever. He had been at a fire, seen an ar- 
 rest, and had been almost successful in promoting a
 
 84 THE BATTLE 
 
 street fight. He had had a very enjoyable day, on 
 the whole, and he was hungry. 
 
 The new boarder interested him, and he began to 
 make his acquaintance, his method being the not un- 
 usual one of asking innocently impertinent questions. 
 He, however, had no objection to saying " Mr." Jack- 
 son, and was smoothly called " Mr." Caffrey in re- 
 turn. 
 
 Haggleton saw another opportunity, and, as usual, 
 he took it. He talked to Joe, but at Moran. 
 
 Yes, he was looking for a job. No, he had not 
 saved a penny out of his failure. 
 
 " Huh," commented Joe, " when I fail it will be the 
 other fellow who will do the worrying. You bet he 
 wouldn't get every cent away from me." 
 
 Yes, Mr. Jackson had plans. He was going to win 
 back what he had lost. Haggleton enjoyed the double 
 meaning of this speech, but Moran snorted. 
 
 " Once you are down and out, you stay down and 
 out," he snarled. 
 
 " Well, I will try, anyhow." 
 
 " You won't get the opportunity," persisted Moran. 
 
 " I shan't wait for it. I will create it." 
 
 " Stuff ! Once you are down and out, you might 
 as well quit. The capitalists have framed it all up." 
 
 " I thought you'd smoke up, Moran," interjected his 
 irreverent son-in-law : " I knew you wouldn't let your 
 pipe go out." 
 
 And he added, turning to Haggleton: 
 
 " Now listen to him, Mr. Jackson the trusts, the 
 wrongs of labor, the tyranny of the rich. Oh, say, 
 I've heard enough to set up as a socialist speaker
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 85 
 
 myself. And all that chin music don't do any good, 
 either." 
 
 But Moran was launched. He snarled and cursed, 
 denounced and accused all the long litany of his 
 losses, his failure, his poverty. 
 
 Haggleton listened attentively, analyzing the man's 
 arguments as they flowed from his now fluent lips. 
 It was the first time that he had heard the voice of 
 social discontent direct. Heretofore he had given it 
 merely a hasty moment of attention as it expressed 
 itself in press reports or magazine articles. 
 
 What impressed him most strongly about Moran's 
 tirade was that the man placed upon the shoulders of 
 the rich, not only the responsibility for all the wrongs 
 of society, but also the entire duty of righting them. 
 They were to be made to disgorge their ill-gotten 
 gains, they were to be forced to hand over the greater 
 part of the earnings of their labor and ability to the 
 workers, who, in their turn, it appeared, would do no 
 more than now, rather less. 
 
 They must assume the heavy task of social reor- 
 ganization, abdicate willingly the advantages they had 
 won, while " the people " stood by, a club in their 
 hands, and saw to it that they did it. Shorter hours 
 of labor, better pay, free opportunity, better educa- 
 tion, lower rents, better living quarters. . . . 
 
 Joe became impatient. 
 
 " Stop gassin', Moran," he said tersely. " I al- 
 ways tell him that he's smokin' the wrong dope, Mr. 
 Jackson. Phillip Ames and Mr. Gentle, now, they talk 
 sense, at any rate. Say, Moran, you wouldn't hang 
 on to your money if you were rich, eh? "
 
 86 THE BATTLE 
 
 " What would you do if you were rich, Mr. Caff- 
 rey ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Oh, say, you just watch me. I'd be at the track 
 every day at 2.45, in the grand stand. Wouldn't I 
 wear the sporty clothes ! I'd put a thousand on every 
 race, one, two, three, and a thousand straight on every 
 hundred to one shot. You wouldn't catch me goin' off 
 on any three months' trip on a yacht with the ponies 
 runnin' at New Orleans." 
 
 " You would soon be rid of your money, Mr. Caff- 
 rey." 
 
 " Not me. Say, do you think that the millionaires 
 haven't got the races fixed, like everything else? They 
 know the owners and the trainers and the jockeys 
 and the starters oh, say, it is a pipe." 
 
 Haggleton was genuinely astonished. So, if he 
 should happen to bet in a horse race, it would be as- 
 sumed that here, too, he was crooked? 
 
 But Joe was continuing his picture of riches beyond 
 the dreams of avarice: 
 
 " Not but that I wouldn't be willin' to own a million- 
 dollar yacht like John J.," he continued. 
 
 Moran sprang up. 
 
 " The thief ! " he shouted ; " the robber, the blood- 
 sucker, the murderer! He has made me what I am. 
 He has killed my daughter's husband, he he " 
 
 The man choked. 
 
 " His daughter's husband, my brother-in-law," ex- 
 plained Joe very calmly, " was killed at a grade cross- 
 ing by a train on a road in which John J. has a lot 
 of stock." 
 
 But Moran ranted on.
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 87 
 
 " He takes our money," he cried, " and then he 
 gets us down here into his filthy tenements, to give 
 us consumption. You are in John J. Haggleton's 
 Lung Block, Jackson! The bakery I work in is in 
 one of his houses ! You ought to see it. What does 
 the Board of Health do about it? Nothing! " 
 
 " Perhaps Haggleton knows nothing about it him- 
 self," objected the millionaire. 
 
 " Then it is his business to find out ! Say," con- 
 tinued Moran, suddenly calming down, " you want 
 a job ? Well, you try to get one in our bakery. Bread, 
 eh? After you have worked there a week you will 
 have to choke it down ! " 
 
 " Dinner," said Jenny tersely. She had not paid 
 the slightest attention to her father's rantings, she had 
 become so used to them. 
 
 The three men rose, drew up their chairs to the 
 table, and sat down. Haggleton made a pretense of 
 eating, but barely touched anything. He still devoted 
 himself to Moran. That chance reference to work 
 in the bakery must not be allowed to pass. At last 
 he won from him the admission that a helper in the 
 bakery was sick and that a substitute was needed. A 
 promise to recommend him for the temporary em- 
 ployment was less easily extracted. Moran was one 
 of those rare exceptions among the poor, a man who 
 will not help his neighbors. 
 
 And so Haggleton had won his first step. He was 
 to be a baker like Moran! 
 
 The conversation still went on, mostly between Joe 
 and his father-in-law, Haggleton listening again in- 
 tently. Yes, he had been right in his judgment. In
 
 88 THE BATTLE 
 
 Moran's case it had not been a question of the con- 
 ditions that confronted the man, but of the man who 
 confronted the conditions. And it would always be 
 thus. 
 
 The millionaire now turned to Jenny. 
 
 " That's fine coffee," he said. 
 
 The girl flushed with pleasure. This coffee had 
 been her treat in honor of the coming of the new 
 boarder. She had begun to fear that it would be 
 taken without any notice in the heat of the discus- 
 sion, beyond Joe's humorous assumption of a finicky 
 attitude when he had taken up his cup between thumb 
 and forefinger, the two middle fingers gracefully 
 curled, the little finger elegantly stuck out. Now she 
 was rewarded. 
 
 " I love good coffee," she answered. 
 
 " I used to keep house for myself, after a fashion," 
 continued the millionaire, " and, do you know, I am 
 just like a woman I take an interest in prices. Now 
 may I ask what you pay for this coffee ? " 
 
 " Eighteen cents," she said. 
 
 " Not for a pound ? " 
 
 " No, for half a pound." 
 
 " Already ground, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " H'm ! A pound of good coffee in the bean costs 
 only twenty-eight cents. Ah, yes, we poor people 
 waste a lot of money." 
 
 Moran stared at him. 
 
 "Waste money?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. I believe there's more extravagance 
 down here than in Fifth Avenue. Now, Miss Jenny,
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 89 
 
 may I ask you another question? What do you pay 
 for coal?" 
 
 " Fifteen cents a bucketful," said Jermy. 
 
 " How much in a bucketful ? " 
 
 " You can search me." 
 
 " About twenty-five pounds," volunteered Joe. 
 
 " Twenty-five pounds," calculated Haggleton. 
 " That's eighty bucketfuls to a ton. Eighty times fif- 
 teen is twelve dollars. You pay twice as much for coal 
 as Haggleton does." 
 
 " He buys it by the ton," growled Moran. " Where 
 would we put a ton of coal ? " 
 
 " And where would we get six dollars all at once 
 to pay for it ? " asked Joe. 
 
 " If Miss Jenny will allow me," replied Haggleton, 
 " I'll find a place for the coal one of these days, and 
 we may think up some scheme of buying it by the 
 ton." 
 
 " Now, this is between Miss Jenny and me," he 
 continued hastily, afraid of having perhaps gone too 
 far. " You see, I used to buy in large quantities, and 
 know a thing or two about it." 
 
 Jenny smiled upon him, He was a stranger, he 
 had been well to do but yesterday, his ways were prob- 
 ably not theirs. She took no offense at his remarks. 
 She merely thought that he meant well, and let it go at 
 that. Then, she considered, coffee the luxury of the 
 poor at twenty-eight cents! That would not be so 
 bad. She would listen carefully to this old bachelor, 
 perhaps she could pick up some hints. 
 
 After dinner Joe lighted his eternal cigarette, Moran 
 his pipe. Haggleton did not smoke. Jenny washed
 
 go THE BATTLE 
 
 her dishes with more care than she had bestowed 
 upon the task in many a day and arranged them in 
 a more orderly manner than was her wont. 
 
 Haggleton suppressed his indignation at Joe, who 
 had done nothing that day, and yet allowed the girl to 
 return to her task of gilding the little statuettes with- 
 out offering to assist her. An extra brush and his help 
 would mean a double output, he reflected. But he con- 
 sidered that he had done enough for one day and that 
 it would be unwise to attempt to do more. 
 
 Jenny's brain was busily at work as she turned one 
 statuette after the other, her brush rapidly passing 
 over their surface. She was planning a thorough 
 house-cleaning, and then, when the boarder began to 
 pay, several small purchases. Yes, she liked the man. 
 He took things for granted, they would get along with 
 him. 
 
 But soon her mind returned to its eternal preoccu- 
 pation Phillip. Would he come that night? No, of 
 course not ! He was over there, at the boarding house, 
 with the woman he loved. Her heart contracted with 
 pain. Oh, if only she had not ! Perhaps, if that 
 episode in her life had never been, he might ! She 
 sighed with resignation, bent her head low as the 
 tears blurred her vision, and went on with her work. 
 Yet hope would not be denied. It entered her breast 
 again and began to weave another of its inexhaustible 
 dreams. 
 
 Phillip did not come. Joe, rising after he had fin- 
 ished his third cigarette, announced that the young 
 diver, whose guest he was to be that night, expected 
 him by ten, and took his leave for his usual evening
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 91 
 
 stroll in the Bowery. Moran grunted, Mr. Jackson 
 rose and shook hands. 
 
 Gentle arrived at nine to see how the newcomer 
 was getting along. The two had a long talk on social 
 conditions, temperate, sensible. The diver had thought 
 much on the subject, and to some purpose. He was 
 pleased to learn the standpoint of the enemy. Moran 
 listened moodily, and as he listened there was born 
 in him an enmity toward this Jackson, who stoutly 
 maintained that the first duty of the poor, as of every- 
 body, was to help themselves. 
 
 Jenny rose at a quarter to ten, worn out. She 
 wound up the alarm clock, lighted a small lamp, said 
 good night and disappeared. Gentle went soon after- 
 wards. 
 
 Left alone, Moran and Haggleton did not find a 
 word to say to each other. The millionaire's sug- 
 gestion of an open window for the sake of fresh air 
 was curtly vetoed. 
 
 " We are glad it's warm here. You will need coal 
 by the ton, Jackson, if you want to go in for that 
 fresh-air business. They are all preaching it at us in 
 the papers. Let them tell us how to pay for it." 
 
 This was his last utterance. He got up and began 
 to undress. His preparations for the night consisted 
 of the removal of his coat, waistcoat, shirt and shoes. 
 Then he slipped into bed, keeping his trousers on. 
 
 Haggleton watched him calmly, suppressing the 
 thought that came to him that this man in those clothes 
 baked bread for others to eat. Then he, too, retired. 
 
 He stretched himself luxuriously between the clean, 
 fresh sheets upon the hard mattress. It had been a
 
 92 THE BATTLE 
 
 busy day for him, and he felt tired, but he could not 
 sleep. Too much had happened! 
 
 He had found his son! 
 
 He had started life anew! 
 
 He had accepted the challenge to the greatest battle 
 of his career! 
 
 And he must learn to do his loving himself ! 
 
 Haggleton lay quite still, staring up at the darkness 
 above him. After his habit, he allowed the thoughts 
 and impressions of the day to race through his brain 
 without attempt to control them. It was thus that he 
 had worked out all the problems of his life. He gave 
 them free rein to gallop through his mind, to mix 
 and mingle until, having found lodgment there, they 
 were ready for orderly, systematic treatment. 
 
 And as in his former ventures, so here, they gradu- 
 ally began to converge around a central point. Hith- 
 erto it had always been himself as identified with his 
 interests ; this time it was himself united with his son. 
 
 He had made a good beginning, he knew. Gentle 
 held all the cards, and yet he had already succeeded 
 in maneuvering himself into the position of greatest 
 advantage. He was nearer his boy than was his 
 adopted father, because he had succeeded in arousing 
 his interest. Phillip would be thinking of him and his 
 venture, watching its development, learning new 
 things, hitherto undreamed of from him. 
 
 Margaret Lawrence ? She was as yet the unknown 
 factor in the battle. She was evidently a woman of 
 culture, far superior socially to this environment. 
 Well, if she was to be his daughter-in-law, so much 
 the better! Of course, the girl was a social worker
 
 MR. JACKSON STARTS LIFE ANEW 93 
 
 of some kind, a reformer? No doubt that had been 
 the attraction between her and Phillip from the first. 
 
 Jenny, Haggleton concluded, he liked. She might 
 be useful. So might Joe, who amused him. He would 
 take that young man in hand, by the way; it might 
 strengthen Phillip's interest. 
 
 As for Moran, his theory, evidently, was that it 
 is the duty of the rich to look after the poor, without 
 effort on their own part. He was an enemy, there 
 could be no doubt of that, but Haggleton made a 
 contemptuous movement of dismissal. 
 
 He must teach Phillip to love him and he must 
 learn to do his loving himself. 
 
 Haggleton slowly dropped off to sleep.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 
 
 ON being awakened by the alarm clock the next 
 morning, Haggleton found, to his surprise, 
 that he had slept quite well. The close air of the 
 room had given him a headache, but he shook this off 
 by going down into the street and taking a brisk walk 
 around Lung Block. He had hardly known that it 
 formed part of his enormous real-estate holdings. 
 
 On his return he found Jenny ready with the break- 
 fast, and Joe and Moran already devouring theirs. 
 It was bread and coffee, nothing more. The mil- 
 lionaire asked permission to toast his share of the 
 meal, which Jenny readily granted, getting up to as- 
 sist him in a task that proved unexpectedly complicated 
 in the absence of a toaster. The young woman was 
 again carefully dressed. Joe had already observed the 
 fact, and had accused her of having designs upon 
 the new boarder's heart and hand. 
 
 After breakfast Moran hurried away to his day 
 of toil in the cellar bake shop. Joe, after various 
 adroit but vain attempts to borrow a dollar from 
 Jenny or the new boarder, drifted out, and Haggle- 
 ton, after repeated offers of service to Jenny, re- 
 solved that the best thing he could do would be to 
 take a look around and familiarize himself with the 
 
 94
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 95 
 
 condition his property was in. Phillip, who was 
 " off " that morning, came in, driven by curiosity, and 
 offered to pilot " Mr. Jackson " through that un- 
 familiar part of town. The offer was accepted with 
 alacrity. 
 
 It was now a quarter to eight, and as they joined 
 the throng of hurrying toilers Phillip's attitude was 
 that of a man facing a strange and great responsi- 
 bility, an inconceivable opportunity that he must make 
 the most of; but Haggleton was simply serene and 
 good natured. Only one thing in the picture seemed 
 strange to him that he was walking here with his 
 son. His son! That was the single fact of impor- 
 tance in all this curious business. This was his son, 
 this strong, serious-faced young fellow beside him, 
 with his fine head, and his stride of self-reliance. 
 Haggleton studied Phillip carefully, and noted with 
 approval the square jaw and the keen, discerning 
 eyes. He was nobody's fool, anyway, this boy. 
 
 They paused at the Bowery and Canal Street, and 
 watched the crush of men and women fighting their 
 way up the elevated stairs, and packing themselves 
 into the cars. Then they turned east, and walked 
 against the surging river of humanity. 
 
 " You call these the poorest people in New York ? " 
 asked Haggleton. 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " Then New York makes a pretty good showing. 
 Do you see any rags or misery? Look at these men. 
 They all wear leather shoes, don't they? In Europe 
 the poorest people wear wooden shoes. That's some- 
 thing, isn't it? And they all wear derby hats, and
 
 96 THE BATTLE 
 
 starched shirts, and neckties, and watch chains, and 
 overcoats with velvet collars." 
 
 " You can't judge by appearances," objected Phillip. 
 
 " Yes, you can, too. Look at these women. Would 
 anybody pick them out as very poor? Not a bit of 
 it! They're just about like the women you see any- 
 where. They've got feathers in their hats, and gloves, 
 and bracelets, and leather bags. What do you expect ? 
 They're not cold or hungry, are they ? No, sir. They're 
 busy and contented, men and women both. Why 
 shouldn't they be? They have work, and fair wages, 
 and " 
 
 " Oh, no ! unfair wages." 
 
 " Well, they're earning a living, and they have the 
 same chances to save and advance that anyone has, 
 the same chances that that I had." 
 
 Phillip shook his head. " You only see these who 
 have work and are able to work ; you don't see those 
 who are left at home. You don't see the sick, and 
 the old, and the young. You don't see the wrecks." 
 
 " No, but I see what makes the wrecks, or some 
 of them," answered Haggleton. " It's extravagance. 
 Most of these men smoke, that's bad; and a lot of 
 them go into saloons, that's worse. And look at the 
 cheap jewelry on the women. Why! they all wear 
 imitation pearls ! And see the girls in these drug stores 
 wasting money on chewing gum and soda water! 
 Look at the banners across the streets with ' balls ' 
 and ' concerts at twenty-five cents ' in big letters ! 
 And theater signs in all the windows ! I tell you, they 
 waste their money." 
 
 Phillip thought uneasily of a promise he had made
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 97 
 
 to Jenny a few days before, to accompany her to 
 one of these "balls." 
 
 " These people must have some pleasure," he said. 
 
 " Not at first. They must cut out pleasures at first. 
 I did. If they want to escape from these tenements 
 they've got to save." 
 
 Phillip's face darkened, and he looked at Haggleton 
 sharply without speaking. They had turned to the 
 left at Allen Street under the thundering bridge of the 
 elevated, and turned again at Hester Street, and were 
 now retracing their steps toward the Bowery, passing 
 many mean streets and endless rows of tenements. 
 
 " So you think they can escape by saving ? " he 
 said quietly. " Do you know that New York has miles 
 and miles of streets like these with a million human 
 beings herded in foul, dark rooms? Can they all es- 
 cape by saving ? " 
 
 Haggleton started to reply, but Phillip went on 
 quickly, his voice rising with intenser feeling. 
 
 " I'll tell you how one man escaped by saving " ; he 
 pointed down Orchard Street ; " he lived in that sec- 
 ond house ; he was a poor cap maker, and he shot him- 
 self because he was out of work, and couldn't bear 
 to see his wife and little children suffer. He knew 
 they would get the insurance money, anyway. That's 
 how he saved. And two years ago, over there on 
 Eldridge Street," he pointed again, " I found a family 
 of poor Jews living in a dark corner of the hallway, 
 under the stairs. There was no window, no door, it 
 wasn't a room at all; only a narrow, slanting space 
 roughry boarded off, and the landlord made them pay 
 eight dollars a month for it. There the mother had
 
 98 THE BATTLE 
 
 a baby. That's how they saved. And back in Allen 
 Street you can find whole families to-day living in 
 a single room, dark and damp, and swarming with 
 vermin, and sleeping five or six in a bed. That's 
 how they save." 
 
 " I suppose so," said Haggleton coolly. " If people 
 are once caught in the mire there's no telling how 
 deep they'll sink. But you mustn't forget that things 
 are improving. These tenements are nothing like as 
 bad as they were forty years ago." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ! " 
 
 " But I know. What do you think they did with 
 the garbage forty years ago ? Threw it into the streets 
 for the pigs to eat. Yes, sir. Pigs were the public 
 scavengers; they used to run all around here, and 
 this whole region was so filthy that well, it was 
 cleaned out by cholera and yellow fever more than 
 once you knew that, didn't you ? And smallpox was 
 the regular thing. Why, the health wardens used to 
 stand on the sidewalk and shout to people upstairs 
 who had it to put camphor in their clothes and burn 
 some in the stove. That's how they fought disease ! " 
 
 "Who told you that?" questioned Phillip. 
 
 " Nobody told me. I saw it. I lived here," an- 
 swered Haggleton. " And there were slaughter-houses 
 everywhere ; and fat-boilers ; and such vile tenements 
 that they're all gone now, ' Bone Alley,' and ' Kero- 
 sene Row,' and the ' Big Flat,' in Mott Street, and 
 ' Bandits' Roost,' but I tell you it was worth a man's 
 life to go past them at night Now you can go any- 
 where." 
 
 Phillip smiled.
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 99 
 
 " I'll show you a few places where you won't enjoy 
 yourself at night. Still, I admit, we've improved in 
 some things, but we've gone back in others; there 
 may not be as many pigs and murderers about, but 
 there's a lot more consumption and overcrowding. 
 Do you see that little block just ahead? It's only 
 seventy-five feet by two hundred. How many people 
 do you suppose live in it? Guess." 
 
 " Seventy-five feet by two hundred," reflected Hag- 
 gleton, studying the front of the block with its swarms 
 of children. " Let's see a thousand ? " 
 
 " Two thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine by ac- 
 tual count, and that was five years ago the popula- 
 tion of a good-sized town in the space of one of your 
 stables ! " 
 
 " Good Lord ! " exclaimed Haggleton. " How many 
 would that give to a house ? " 
 
 " From a hundred to a hundred and fifty. We're 
 passing through the most densely populated region in 
 the world and you own about half of it." 
 
 "Not that block?" 
 
 " No, but you own enough others. I'll show you 
 some presently." 
 
 They walked on in silence, Haggleton observing 
 Phillip with an interest that was not altogether free 
 from uneasiness. Yes, this boy had a will of his 
 own, and strong convictions that might prove trouble- 
 some. 
 
 " See here," he asked good naturedly, " what's your 
 idea about these tenements ? " 
 
 " They're a disgrace to the city," answered Phillip 
 promptly, " and a danger to the city."
 
 ioo THE BATTLE 
 
 "A danger?" 
 
 " Certainly. Isn't disease a danger ? Aren't they 
 full of disease? Why, they kill thousands of children 
 every year, children that would live if conditions were 
 better. Isn't that a disgrace ? " 
 
 " It's for the parents to protect their children." 
 
 " How ? The parents are poor and helpless. Can 
 they bring sunshine into rooms that open on black air 
 shafts? Can they make playgrounds out of filthy 
 alleys?" 
 
 " They can leave these tenements, they can get 
 out of New York." 
 
 " Yes, by saving. You said that before ; but it's 
 nonsense. An exceptional man might do it with excep- 
 tional luck, but we're talking about the average poor 
 man with the average poor family, and there's no 
 chance at all for them. They never can save enough ; 
 their wages don't permit it, and, if they do put a little 
 aside, it's wiped out by the first sickness." 
 
 " They mustn't get sick." 
 
 Phillip stared. 
 
 " Mustn't get sick? How can they help it with sick- 
 ness all around them ? " 
 
 " When I lived here / never got sick," insisted Hag- 
 gleton. " You don't get sick. These tenement con- 
 ditions may be bad, but I say any man worth shucks 
 can stand 'em ; yes, and win out ! " 
 
 "But the weak?" 
 
 Haggleton stopped and laid a kindly hand on 
 Phillip's shoulder. 
 
 " My boy, you think too much about the weak. Think 
 about the strong. Don't you see that this tenement
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 101 
 
 struggle makes men stronger? You know it does. 
 Would you be the man you are if you'd been coddled 
 in luxury, with everything made easy ? I tell you half 
 the big fellows in this country owe their success to 
 being born poor. So don't be too hard on poverty. 
 Don't be too sure it's a danger to the city. It may be 
 a blessing. Look at our best citizens, and see where 
 they come from. I tell you, young man, poverty's 
 about the finest school we've got." He paused, and 
 then added impressively : " I'm one of the graduates." 
 
 " I know," said Phillip, " but there are other gradu- 
 ates, and speaking of wrecks " He stopped and 
 looked at his watch. " That reminds me, I must tele- 
 phone." He turned into a drug store and called up 
 the Atlantic Wrecking Company. " Too bad ! " he ex- 
 claimed after a brief communication ; " there's a grain 
 boat sunk in the East River off Grand Street; I've 
 got to see about it." 
 
 Haggleton was greatly interested in this, and anx- 
 ious to go along. They could continue their tenement 
 tour in the afternoon. Phillip shook his head. It was 
 an easy enough job; only a bit of patching; but the 
 tide was strong, and there was barely half an hour at 
 slack water when a man could go down. He might not 
 be through before dark. Never mind ; Haggleton would 
 wait; he was glad of a chance to see the wreckers at 
 their work. 
 
 Phillip laughed. 
 
 " All right. This afternoon I'll show you how we 
 go after wrecks in the river. And to-night we'll tackle 
 some of the wrecks on land." 
 
 As a matter of fact it was after seven that evening
 
 102 THE BATTLE 
 
 before Phillip had the grain boat securely patched and 
 the chain under her ready for lifting. He had to go 
 down twice; for the first time, just as everything was 
 ready, a foolish tugboat bumped into them and fouled 
 the chain, leaving the work to be done over again; 
 which meant five hours waiting for the tide. 
 
 So Haggleton got a glimpse of life on the big pon- 
 toons, and several thrills of pleasure as he noted 
 Phillip's quick resourcefulness; and a pang of appre- 
 hension as he watched him swing off the ladder in his 
 ugly suit and disappear beneath the bubbling river. 
 
 As there was a cold rain falling, they spent the 
 waiting hours in the cozy cabin of the Dunderberg, and 
 the crew told stories about perils of the deep. Flagg 
 related an experience with a conger eel. Henderson 
 told of a dock-department diver who was blown to 
 death under forty feet of water, when twenty-eight 
 pounds of dynamite he was putting in for blasting 
 went off too soon. Williams recalled how he fainted 
 away once, a hundred and five feet down, and how 
 another time he let the water into his suit by pulling 
 out a helmet lug on a silly wager. Which reminded 
 Phillip of the time his gasket was cut through by the 
 slam of an iron ladder, and the air went out " hooo," 
 and it was only quick work with the life line that saved 
 him. Haggleton listened and marveled. So this was 
 his son, this master diver! 
 
 They had supper with the crew, and then started 
 back for New York, taking the ferry to Twenty-third 
 Street, where there was something Phillip wanted to 
 show Haggleton. 
 
 " We'll look in here first," he said, and stopped be-
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 
 
 fore a large building on First Avenue. " This is the 
 Municipal Lodging House. They take in two or three 
 hundred homeless men every night." 
 
 " How many homeless men are there in New York ? " 
 
 " Twenty thousand or so." 
 
 " Twenty thousand homeless men ! " repeated Hag- 
 gleton. " And what do the others do, those who can't 
 stay here ? " 
 
 " About three thousand walk the streets," replied 
 Phillip. 
 
 " Not on cold nights like this ! " 
 
 " On cold nights and on hot nights. They huddle in 
 dark corners and alleyways out of the wind. They 
 crouch over gratings above engine rooms and get the 
 warm air. They stand in the midnight bread lines and 
 then go back to their holes. You'll see them shuffling 
 along through the snow with their feet tied up in 
 rags." 
 
 " There are three thousand like that in New York? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And the rest?" 
 
 " The rest pay ten or fifteen cents in cheap lodging 
 houses. You'll see." 
 
 " What do they pay here ? " 
 
 " Nothing ; but the same man may not come more 
 than three times in a month. If he does, he goes to the 
 stone pile. So they're careful. Come in." 
 
 The office attendants nodded pleasantly to Phillip 
 and were evidently glad to have him show his friend 
 about. And, first, they watched the line of stolid, un- 
 kempt men as they gave the facts about themselves 
 and their destitution. Not one had so much as a half
 
 104 THE BATTLE 
 
 dollar in the world, nor any work, nor very much hope, 
 apparently. Most of them were in the prime of life, 
 many of them young men. 
 
 " They seem sober," whispered Haggleton. 
 
 " They don't come here when they're drunk," replied 
 Phillip. " They know they'll get sent up if they do." 
 
 Downstairs they saw these men stripped of their 
 clothes (some of them peeled off two or three sets of 
 garments their whole wardrobe) and then thoroughly 
 scrubbed under a hot shower bath. One man's legs 
 were blotched with sores and bruises from low vi- 
 tality, the doctor said and one had a deeply ulcerated 
 heel ; he had literally been walking on his uppers. 
 
 Overhead they saw the dormitories, long rooms 
 ranged with iron cots, double deckers, a man above 
 and a man below, and watched the now cleansed 
 vagabonds, their hunger stayed with bread and coffee, 
 tumble into these and drop off to slumber, sleeping 
 between clean sheets and in clean nightgowns for the 
 first time in many days. 
 
 " Well," said Haggleton, when they had finished 
 their inspection, " that's all right far as it goes, but 
 these men are getting something for nothing and how 
 much good does it do ? " 
 
 "It's clean, anyway," answered Phillip. " Now come 
 in here." He led the way into another lodging house 
 in the opposite block. " This place accommodates 
 about four hundred, and the men pay from fifteen to 
 twenty-five cents a night. There's no compulsory bath, 
 and as for cleanliness look ! " 
 
 They had reached one of the dormitories, and 
 Phillip pointed out that each cot had a small locker
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 
 
 105 
 
 for the men's clothes, which in the other place were 
 fumigated, but here were simply hung in these rick- 
 ety closets, where abundant cracks encouraged the 
 free circulation of vermin. 
 
 " They get no nightgowns," continued Phillip, " and 
 the sheets are changed only once or twice a week. 
 Many of the men have loathsome diseases ; many have 
 consumption; and there's no doubt consumption and 
 other diseases can be transmitted from man to man by 
 the contamination of sheets." 
 
 " I suppose so," said Haggleton. " How many of 
 these lodging houses are there ? " 
 
 " About a hundred and forty, and you've seen the 
 best. The others are so filthy that well, I asked an 
 attendant once how often they washed the towels, and 
 he said with a grin : ' Wash 'em ? We never wash 
 'em ; we use 'em until they break.' " 
 
 They took the elevated down to Grand Street and 
 spent an hour visiting more of these sinister asylums 
 on the Bowery where bunks are offered to human 
 wrecks at twenty or fifteen or ten cents a night or 
 less, vile places, all of them, reeking with foulness and 
 disease ; centers of contamination for young men, hot- 
 beds of vice and crime. In one hideous resort on Mul- 
 berry Street where the charge was seven cents, they 
 found men ranged along in hammocks, with neither 
 sheets nor covers, and dozens sleeping on the bare 
 floor. 
 
 " Pretty bad," muttered Haggleton, " but, after all, 
 it's their own fault ; they won't work." 
 
 " Some of them can't work." 
 
 " But a good many won't."
 
 106 THE BATTLE 
 
 " That's true. They say things are all unfair and a 
 man's a fool to work when he can beat the game by 
 lying or begging or stealing." 
 
 "You admit that?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Then what's your idea in showing me all this ? " 
 
 " It's a problem for you to solve. That's what you're 
 down here for, to see things and then say what ought 
 to be done. We have ideas, but you'll have better ones 
 before you get through." 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Because you're a great man with a great brain. 
 You know how to organize, you hate waste; well, or- 
 ganize these wasted lives; find some place for them, 
 some use, say a farm school, or or a labor bureau 
 or anything. It's up to you." 
 
 Haggleton shook his head. 
 
 " I'm not responsible for these lodging houses." 
 
 " You are responsible," flashed Phillip, " because it's 
 men like you who own them; it's men like you who 
 take the dimes and pennies of these poor devils talk 
 about tainted money! a million dollars in lodging- 
 house money paid every year in New York City by 
 your fellow-graduates in poverty." 
 
 " No, no," objected Haggleton, " it's not poverty 
 that brought them where they are; it's drink and 
 laziness and " 
 
 " And ignorance and weakness," added Phillip. 
 
 " That makes four causes." 
 
 " Four effects." 
 
 " I said ' causes,' " insisted the other. 
 
 Phillip paused a moment, and his eyes met Haggle-
 
 TOILERS AND WRECKS 
 
 107 
 
 ton's in steady defiance. Then he said slowly : " No, 
 effects. These men are products of conditions. It's 
 years of bad air in your tenements and of underfeed- 
 ing at your wages that make them crave drink. It's a 
 childhood wasted in brutalizing labor that has weak- 
 ened their bodies and dulled their minds. It's a man- 
 hood gone in hopeless struggle that has left them bro- 
 ken and disheartened. There are twenty thousand of 
 them in New York, Mr. Haggleton, who have lost 
 their grip, who are bums, wrecks, lodging-house loaf- 
 ers; but don't forget that they are victims of a cruel 
 order which for the vast majority gives poverty as the 
 only reward of toil." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Haggleton.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MORE WRECKS 
 
 THE next morning Moran grudgingly announced 
 that he would probably be able to get Jackson 
 a temporary job in the bakeshop within the next few 
 days. The helper was still sick; no doubt it would 
 turn out to be typhoid in the end. It usually did in 
 that damp, unventilated cellar, with its disgraceful 
 plumbing. Then he hurried away, as on the previous 
 day, unbrushed, unkempt. 
 
 Gentle, to whom Phillip had told the results of Hag- 
 gleton's first day among the toilers and the wrecks, 
 arrived soon after, accompanied by the young diver. 
 Both were now intensely interested in the millionaire's 
 venture and its ultimate results, Gentle's concern be- 
 ing, of course, complicated by considerations of whose 
 very existence Phillip knew nothing. This morning 
 Gentle was off duty, while Phillip had another diving 
 job to attend to; so it was arranged that Haggleton 
 should spend the morning with Gentle and Joe organ- 
 izing the flat. Phillip went away, first arranging with 
 Haggleton to meet him at Chatham Square at a quar- 
 ter past twelve. He would be free by that time, and 
 they must not waste the afternoon. 
 
 Nor was the morning wasted. Gentle put up shelves ; 
 Haggleton sorted out rubbish; Joe, familiar with the 
 
 1 08
 
 MORE WRECKS 
 
 109 
 
 disorder of the Moran household, made himself gen- 
 erally useful. Gentle quietly noticed that Moran's lazy 
 son-in-law was already under the driving influence of 
 the millionaire. Jenny, while working at the plaster 
 figures, helped with suggestions and little touches. The 
 flat was beginning to take on a homelike air, and, 
 thank Heaven, they had plenty of sunshine. 
 
 The two elderly men took real pleasure in their 
 planning and work together. The careers of both, so 
 utterly dissimilar, yet had this in common, that they 
 had taught them to be systematic ; to think quickly and 
 to act more quickly still. They began to feel drawn 
 toward each other; the secret warfare upon which 
 they had just entered assumed the softer aspect of a 
 not altogether unfriendly rivalry. 
 
 At twelve o'clock Haggleton left the flat to keep his 
 appointment. He was in excellent spirits. 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed Phillip as they met, " so you 
 came ? " 
 
 " Did you think I'd run away ? " laughed Haggleton. 
 
 " It's a wonder you don't," replied Phillip with a 
 puzzled look. 
 
 " I don't want to run away," answered Haggleton. 
 " I've started out to do a certain thing and I'm going 
 to do it." 
 
 Phillip shot a glance of admiration at him. " You're 
 game, all right. Well, let's eat. In here. Keep your 
 hat on." 
 
 They entered a Bowery restaurant near Chatham 
 Square, a battered place seen through two dusty win- 
 dows, the one spread with cakes and pies, the other 
 with lengths of raw, red sausage. At long tables were
 
 IIO THE BATTLE 
 
 silent, shifty-eyed men who seemed to sit as far apart 
 as possible. And they all kept their hats on and their 
 coat collars turned up ; while hard-faced waiters moved 
 among them bawling out orders : " Coming stew." 
 " Bowl of oats draw one." " Sinkers and draw 
 one." 
 
 " What's that' draw one ' ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Coffee," answered Phillip, " out of those big urns." 
 
 From time to time one of the silent men would rise 
 and carefully pick out a cake at the counter. Then he 
 would slouch back to his seat and eat the cake. 
 
 " More wrecks, I suppose ? " commented Haggleton. 
 
 " Yes," said Phillip. 
 
 They stayed in the place about ten minutes and took 
 apple pie and coffee. Phillip paid for it. 
 
 " Not bad, that pie," declared Haggleton as they 
 came out. " Now I'm ready for anything you can 
 show me, the worst you can show me." 
 
 Phillip's face was set. This man wanted to see pov- 
 erty and misery. Very well, he should be accommo- 
 dated. 
 
 " I know an old lady on Roosevelt Street," he said, 
 " who is dying of consumption. We'll go there first." 
 
 On the way he spoke briefly of the case. The old 
 lady had no one in the world to care for her but a little 
 granddaughter eight years old. The child did what 
 she could mornings and evenings, but between times 
 she went to school ; so the sick woman was absolutely 
 alone for hours every day. And she was so feeble 
 she could scarcely lift herself from the bed. 
 
 " This is the place," said Phillip, and turning into a 
 dark hallway with greasy green walls, they climbed
 
 MORE WRECKS m 
 
 four flights of stairs to a tiny room at the back. Every- 
 thing here was scrupulously clean, but the floor was 
 bare of covering, and the only furniture was a cot bed, 
 two chairs, and a little stove. There was one window 
 in the room, and the walls were painted red. 
 
 The dying woman lay propped against a pillow, and 
 her thin face brightened as she saw Phillip. Yes, she 
 was feeling better. A lady had been very kind and 
 sent in chicken broth. No, she wasn't lonely, and, any- 
 way, Ella mustn't miss her school. Ella was a good 
 child, and did everything for her. Oh, yes, they were 
 comfortable enough. Ella didn't mind sleeping on a 
 blanket over there in the corner. The rent? Why, 
 four dollars a month. It was a nice room, only she 
 wished the sun could shine in. She loved the sun. 
 There were a few weeks in June when the sun did 
 shine in, but June was a long way off. She closed her 
 eyes wearily and lay still. 
 
 " Well ? " asked Phillip when they reached the street. 
 
 " There's nothing to say," replied Haggleton. " She's 
 going to die. We're all going to die. What can you 
 do about it ? " 
 
 " But that child only eight years old ? " 
 
 " It's life," said Haggleton. 
 
 Phillip shook his head. 
 
 " I'll show you another case," he muttered, and led 
 the way to a house in Cherry Street where the crape 
 was hanging. And he spoke tenderly of the dead girl 
 within, whom he had known and befriended, who had 
 been so brave and unselfish, and had literally given 
 her life at her sewing machine for her brothers and 
 sisters.
 
 U 2 THE BATTLE 
 
 At the door they were met by a coarse-featured man 
 whose eyes were red and swollen. He said he was 
 her Rosalie's brother, a truck driver from Brook- 
 lyn. He had not seen much of his family in years; 
 the old man got sore on him for boozing, so he cut 
 loose. But he always thought a lot of Rosalie, and this 
 thing hit him hard, and well, she was gone, and 
 and He was crying now, and his breath smelled of 
 whisky. 
 
 "Where is she?" asked Phillip. 
 
 " In there," he pointed. 
 
 Phillip went into the front room and Haggleton fol- 
 lowed him. Around the walls were chairs, and on one 
 of them a florid-faced man was sleeping heavily. 
 
 " He's tired," explained the brother. " We had the 
 wake last night." 
 
 "Where are the children?" 
 
 " At school. Do you do you want to look at her ? " 
 
 Very reverently Phillip stepped forward for a last 
 sight of Rosalie. Haggleton stood beside him, and 
 noticed that the coffin was of polished wood with sil- 
 ver handles. Also, that the young girl had been 
 dressed in a white-satin gown. 
 
 When they went back to the kitchen Haggleton 
 asked how they had been able to pay for these things. 
 The brother's face brightened : this was his one conso- 
 lation for years of neglect they had given Rosalie a 
 grand funeral. She had always longed for a white- 
 satin dress, but she never could have one, and now 
 anyway she she had it. And the coffin did they 
 notice that? It was the very finest, with real silver 
 handles. It cost sixty dollars, and the dress cost fifty
 
 MORE WRECKS U 3 
 
 dollars. And the hearse would be elegant with four 
 two-horse carriages. 
 
 Finally, after more questions, Haggleton found that 
 they had used the insurance money for these expenses. 
 There were three hundred dollars on Rosalie's life and 
 they were spending most of it. That was the least they 
 could do, the brother thought. 
 
 " You see how these people act," began Haggleton as 
 they left the house. " Here they had three hundred 
 dollars, and now the children will " 
 
 " They did it out of love," interrupted Phillip, and 
 he murmured under his breath : " Poor little Rosalie ! " 
 
 The next case was farther down the street an Irish 
 longshoreman about thirty-five who also was nearing 
 his end consumption and cancer of the throat. He 
 had been in the hospital but had come home for the 
 last days. He wanted to be near the wife and the kid. 
 There they were, the wife sitting by the stove, and 
 the kid, a little fellow of five with big, frightened 
 eyes, playing about, barefoot, on the cold floor. His 
 toy was an old bottle in which he was rattling some 
 rusty nails. 
 
 The sick man lay in a foul back room where there 
 was no window. A kerosene lamp smoking on a table 
 threw a dim light on his wasted face and shrunken 
 body. His wife had lifted his head by putting a chair 
 under the pillow, for he coughed constantly. He knew 
 that he was dying, but he was happy to be home again 
 near the wife and the kid. He was in no pain. 
 
 Haggleton beckoned the woman into the front room 
 and questioned her. Had her husband been a drinking 
 man? No, it was exposure to bad weather that had
 
 II4 THE BATTLE 
 
 caused his sickness. Why had he not got other work ? 
 That was the only work he knew, and he couldn't take 
 chances with a family to support. Did she work her- 
 self? Yes, she did cleaning. 
 
 As they came away Haggleton discussed this case. 
 What could you expect? This man might have saved 
 his money while he had been strong and healthy, and 
 changed his work. Besides, there must have been some 
 taint in him ; a sound man doesn't get cancer and con- 
 sumption. He didn't; Phillip didn't; this Irishman 
 was evidently unsound. 
 
 " Haven't you any pity for an unsound man ? " pro- 
 tested Phillip. 
 
 " What's the use of pity ? An unsound man is un- 
 sound. He can't resist. He's bound to perish, and it's 
 better he should. The only way to improve the race 
 it to prune away the weak and the unworthy. That's 
 what poverty does." 
 
 " Suppose a man is strong of body but not intel- 
 ligent?" 
 
 " Then he's unworthy." 
 
 " And he ought to perish ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "And the weak ought to perish you really mean 
 that?" 
 
 " Certainly, whether they're weak in body or mind." 
 
 " My God ! " exclaimed Phillip, " that's the most 
 brutal talk I ever heard ! " 
 
 " Brutal, yes, but think it over, young man, think 
 it over. I say the weak and the unworthy ought to 
 perish. It's true when you grow fruits and flowers, 
 isn't it? It's true when you breed animals, isn't it?
 
 MORE WRECKS 115 
 
 Then why isn't it true if you want to build up a race 
 of men?" 
 
 " Because " Phillip hesitated " because the great- 
 est authority in the world is against you." 
 
 " What authority is that? " 
 
 Phillip looked him gravely in the eyes. " The au- 
 thority that says : ' Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
 the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
 me.' " 
 
 " H'm ! " grunted Haggleton, and fell into silence. 
 
 So they walked on until Phillip spoke again : " Now, 
 if you like, we'll go in here." 
 
 They had come to a block of better-looking tene- 
 ments and made their way to a four-room flat with 
 signs of relative prosperity if not of cleanliness. 
 This was the home of a strong Italian woman who 
 supported her family by taking in washing. The fam- 
 ily consisted of seven boys, all under eight, and in- 
 cluded two sets of twins. 
 
 " Bimeby nodder one," volunteered the mother 
 smiling. 
 
 Most of the boys were playing about the room ; sev- 
 eral had sore eyes, and all were barefoot. 
 
 " Why don't you put shoes on them ? " asked Hag- 
 gleton. 
 
 " No got," grinned the mother, and explained that 
 her husband had temporarily abandoned her. So she 
 had taken two lady boarders in the back room. One 
 of them paid her two dollars a month, and the other, 
 being poor and sick, helped with the ironing. 
 
 The two lady boarders presently appeared, one 
 showing a hand bulkily bandaged, and the other a
 
 u6 THE BATTLE 
 
 very queer face. It was the girl with the bandaged 
 hand who had stirred Phillip's interest. She was a 
 " dipper " at the gold-dust factory for which Jenny 
 Moran worked, and had contracted tuberculosis of the 
 joints. This had shown itself in her hand, which had 
 swollen to double its size and had just been operated 
 upon at the hospital. She unwrapped the cloth, and 
 exposed a sickly, whitish mass with deep red cuts 
 where the knife had gone. The hand looked dead and 
 useless. 
 
 Phillip whispered to Haggleton that the doctor had 
 told him the disease would probably spread through 
 the girl's body and ultimately kill her. It was clearly 
 a life put in jeopardy by a dangerous trade. All these 
 gold-dust girls were ailing, their lungs were full of 
 metallic dust, and many of them would contract tuber- 
 culosis. 
 
 Haggleton took this very calmly, but thought it an 
 outrage that a girl in such a state should help with the 
 washing. Here was a basket of clothes for some fam- 
 ily uptown. Did she handle these clothes? Yes, cer- 
 tainly. With those soiled bandages ? Well, sometimes 
 she took the bandages off. Good Lord, that was 
 worse ! The family uptown might be infected. Phillip 
 looked reproachfully at Haggleton, and assured him 
 that if he wished to consider the subject of infection 
 he would show him something much worthier of his 
 indignation. He would show him at once. 
 
 But Haggleton's curiosity was not yet satisfied. He 
 wanted to know what was the matter with the other 
 lady boarder's face. And, after some questioning, he 
 discovered that she was the victim of a beauty doctor.
 
 MORE WRECKS 
 
 117 
 
 It seemed incredible that the most hardened charlatan 
 could ever have encouraged this withered spinster's 
 aspirations to comeliness. But so it was, and, in spite 
 of her poverty, she had somehow raised ninety dollars 
 and given it to this wretch sixty for removing a deep 
 frown line in her forehead, and thirty for filling in a 
 wrinkle. And the result was that the paraffin injected 
 in the forehead had run together in a lump, so that she 
 seemed to have a perpetual angry boil between her 
 eyes, while the paraffin for the wrinkle had spread 
 under her cheek, making it now red, now purple, ac- 
 cording to the weather. She had become a living 
 barometer. 
 
 " And you paid him ninety dollars for this ? " asked 
 Haggleton. 
 
 " Yes," she admitted sadly. 
 
 " Why didn't you have him take the stuff out? " 
 
 " I asked him to, but he said it would cost twenty- 
 five dollars more to take it out, and I didn't have the 
 money." 
 
 " Now, then," triumphed Haggleton on the floor be- 
 low, " was I right in saying that the poor are extrava- 
 gant? Ninety dollars for a beauty doctor when she 
 had no shoes ! " 
 
 " She was foolish," admitted Phillip, " but there are 
 worse things than that. I promised to show you some- 
 thing worthy of your indignation. Now I'll do it." 
 
 He turned into a forbidding street that stretched like 
 a sinister canyon between two rows of evil-looking 
 tenements, their fire escapes hung with bedraggled 
 underclothing. 
 
 " Do you know what street this is ? " asked Phillip.
 
 n8 THE BATTLE 
 
 " No." 
 
 " It's the other end of Market Street. George 
 Washington lived around that corner once when he 
 was President. Do you know who owns this block ? " 
 
 " Why er yes, of course ; / own it." 
 
 " And it's one of the possessions you needn't be 
 proud of. There's not a house here, Mr. Haggleton, 
 nor a room, nor a corner that isn't poisoned with con- 
 sumption germs." 
 
 Phillip entered the first tenement at hand, and going 
 quickly up one flight, he stopped at two narrow doors 
 that stood side by side halfway down the hall. He 
 opened these doors and looked in. Then he went up 
 another flight and opened two corresponding doors. 
 He did this several times in several houses. 
 
 " What are you trying to do ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Wait," replied Phillip, and he continued his search 
 in the next tenement. And again in the next. 
 
 " Ah ! " he exclaimed as he tried once more, " I 
 thought so." They were standing in the half-lighted 
 hallway of a third floor, and from the rear flat came 
 the cries of a child. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Look there ! " He pointed to the boards under 
 one of the two doors. 
 
 " They are wet," said Haggleton ; " some one has 
 spilled water here." Then he looked closer. " No, it's 
 not water, it it's red ! " 
 
 " Open the door," said Phillip. 
 
 Haggleton obeyed, and in spite of himself started 
 back at the stench. " Horrible ! " he cried ; " what 
 is it?"
 
 MORE WRECKS 
 
 119 
 
 " One of the signs," answered Phillip ; " a thing 
 you can see almost any day in this block." 
 " But but where does it come from ? " 
 Phillip answered sternly : " From the men and 
 women and children who pay you rent for tainted 
 homes. Sometimes it's sprinkled all along the halls. 
 They have no marble bathrooms, sir, these tenants of 
 yours, when they have hemorrhages ! "
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AFTER THE BALL 
 
 A FEW nights later, Phillip kept his promise to 
 Jenny Moran, and accompanied her to one of 
 the numerous balls that form so important a factor 
 of the social life of the lower East Side of New York 
 in winter. 
 
 There was nothing remarkable about this one ex- 
 cept the announcements printed on facsimile ten-dol- 
 lar bills of the Confederate States and setting forth 
 that the " Rose Leaf Pleasure Club " would give its 
 " Grand Annual Mask and Civic Ball " in Webster 
 Hall, near Third Avenue, with " Little Buck " as floor 
 manager, and cash prizes for the best " automobile 
 twister," and tickets at fifty cents, including " gent 
 and lady, and gent's hat check." Also the information 
 that Professor Kiegelhast's Famous Metropolitan 
 Orchestra would assist. 
 
 As they entered the hall, about two hundred couples 
 were doing a slow two-step with set and serious faces, 
 most of the girls chewing gum in time to the measure, 
 and many of the young men holding lighted cigars or 
 cigarettes between two fingers while the other two 
 clasped the lady's hand. From time to time, as they 
 turned, these grave gallants would manage to take a 
 puff at the burning weed, and some would whirl
 
 AFTER THE BALL I2I 
 
 solemnly for several minutes, the cigarette held care- 
 lessly between their lips. It was evidently a matter of 
 nice calculation to steer your partner through this maze 
 of dancers and to smoke without setting fire to her. 
 
 When the music stopped, the company withdrew to 
 seats along the walls by the pleasing and expeditious 
 method of sliding across the polished floor, with the 
 result that a dancer in eccentric tramp costume collided 
 violently with a sea nymph wearing a very short skirt 
 of shaggy green moss over long black stockings, and 
 both were sent sprawling; whereupon the sea nymph, 
 with perfect self-possession, asked the tramp what the 
 hell he was trying to do. 
 
 Phillip and Jenny sat down near a rather pretty 
 girl in yellow tights, who was the center of a group 
 where a young man with oily black hair was playfully 
 punching at her while she, pleased and smiling, par- 
 ried the attack with her feet. Another admirer, ap- 
 parently an embellished truck driver, expressed the 
 opinion that her " shape " was " great," and laid an 
 approving red hand upon it with a request for infor- 
 mation as to where the corset ended; which evidently 
 embarrassed the lady, for she murmured : " Aw, for 
 Gawd's sake, get over it." 
 
 During the intermission cards were distributed call- 
 ing attention to various approaching balls in the neigh- 
 borhood, the "Good Time Coterie," the "Timothy 
 Mulligan Association," the " Floradora Girls," the 
 " Horseshoe Athletic Club," and others. It was evi- 
 dently the proper thing to send these cards sailing 
 about the hall as a conjurer does, and presently the 
 air was full of them and the dancing floor so thickly
 
 122 THE BATTLE 
 
 strewn that a man had to come in with a broom and 
 sweep them off. 
 
 One look at Phillip's face showed Jenny that he did 
 not care much for this, and as she cared very little 
 about it herself (what she wanted was to get him 
 alone), she suggested that they go up in the gallery 
 and look on. And if Phillip felt like ordering two 
 glasses of beer, why, that would be very nice. Phillip 
 ordered the beer, and they took seats in the gallery. 
 
 " What sort of people are they ? " he asked, looking 
 down at the human whirl. Familiar as he was with 
 tenement life, he had paid little attention to these balls 
 of the people. " Who are the women ? " 
 
 " Mostly shop girls and factory girls. There are 
 two from our joint. See that tall one in the red dress? 
 They call her ' Crooked Kate,' she's so round-shoul- 
 dered. She's a ' dipper.' " 
 
 "And the men?" 
 
 " Oh, they're cheap clerks, elevator boys, factory 
 hands anything. There's McKee, our foreman, hug- 
 ging that big woman with the white mask. He's a 
 stuff." 
 
 Jenny saw that Phillip was only half listening, evi- 
 dently thinking of something else. " I wouldn't have 
 come, Phil," she said quickly, " if I'd thought it was 
 like this. You know I love to dance, and after a girl's 
 been working hard all the week, why, she needs a little 
 change, doesn't she?" 
 
 " Of course," he said, and then, after a moment's 
 thought : " It can't do these girls much good, this 
 sort of thing. They're not over twenty-two or twenty- 
 three, and do you think it does them any good ? "
 
 r AFTER THE BALL 123 
 
 " Sure, it does," declared Jenny ; " it's the only 
 pleasure they have, going to balls. They go Saturday 
 nights and Sunday afternoons, and sometimes through 
 the week. Why, it's about all they live for. I wish 
 you could hear them at the factory talking about the 
 fellows they meet and the perfectly grand times they 
 have." 
 
 " Do you think " Phillip checked the question in 
 some embarrassment. 
 
 " You mean, do they keep straight ? " supplied 
 Jenny. " You needn't be afraid to say things right 
 out. Some do, and a good many don't. You see, it's 
 pretty late when they get home three or four in the 
 morning. I guess they get kissed all right, but " 
 she smiled coquettishly " they don't see any harm in 
 that." 
 
 " No, I I suppose not," he said absently, which 
 disappointed Jenny, for she saw that her glance had 
 made no impression. 
 
 Jenny had quite made up her mind that Phillip 
 should dance with her at least once, and to this end, 
 with a woman's diplomacy, she dropped the subject 
 for the moment, and began to talk of other things 
 of the new order at the flat, of Haggleton, and then 
 very guardedly of Margaret. But she soon saw that 
 she was making no progress here, and lapsed into 
 silence. 
 
 Presently the music struck up an inviting waltz with 
 a languorous, intensified beat, and Jenny leaned for- 
 ward with a half-sad and half -longing expression, 
 which she knew very well heightened her beauty, es- 
 pecially in profile. And she sat like this for a long
 
 124 THE BATTLE 
 
 time in dreamy reverie, feeling Phillip's eyes on her. 
 Then suddenly she turned to him with a warm, appeal- 
 ing look. " I suppose I must give it all up, mustn't I, 
 Phil?" 
 
 She was like a disappointed child, and he felt sorry 
 for her. " You mean dancing ? Why, no. There's no 
 harm in dancing." 
 
 " But I I have no one to dance with me," she 
 sighed. " I've cut away from my old friends, and 
 the only ones are like like McKee down there." 
 
 She bit her red lips, and Phillip thought she was on 
 the point of crying. " I'll dance with you, Jenny," he 
 said kindly. " I haven't danced for a long time, but 
 I'll do my best." 
 
 They danced the next waltz, and as Phillip held the 
 lithe young creature and felt her graceful supple move- 
 ments, he realized vaguely that she was not created 
 for factory toil and a dull tenement life, but for for 
 what was she created? And Jenny, gliding to the 
 delicious measure, forgot all but one thing that she 
 was here in Phillip's arms, waltzing with Phillip, 
 close to Phillip, and shutting her eyes, she turned, and 
 dreamed, and was happy. 
 
 On their way home Phillip tried to have a serious 
 talk with her, but it was not so easy to say just the 
 right thing. " Tell me, Jenny, how do you like all 
 this ? " he finally asked. 
 
 She laughed. " I told you the other day. If you 
 mean getting up at half past six instead of eleven, I 
 don't like it at all." 
 
 "But the rest?" 
 
 "If you mean working like a slave for six dollars
 
 AFTER THE BALL 125 
 
 a week instead of taking things easy, why, I don't like 
 that either." 
 
 " Then then you regret the old days ? " 
 
 Jenny turned to him with a look half mischievous, 
 half tender. " No, because there's one thing I do like, 
 and that makes up for a whole lot : I I like pleasing 
 you, Phil. You know. I told you." 
 
 " You mustn't say that, Jenny," he replied ; " you 
 must do right because it is right. Do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 " Yes, Phil," she said humbly, but in her heart she 
 had quite a different idea. 
 
 They did not talk much after that, but Phillip 
 thought for a long time about this evening with its 
 apparently trivial happenings, and somehow they filled 
 him with a vague uneasiness. He could not see where 
 he had been at fault ; it was surely right to encourage 
 Jenny and give her a little pleasure; and as to the 
 waltz, why, a waltz was nothing. Yet, reason as he 
 would, he could not shake off a sense of apprehen- 
 sion, and in this mind he fell asleep and dreamed that 
 he had committed a great crime, and that he stood 
 in the presence of many accusers, unable to defend 
 himself. 
 
 In the morning he awoke pale and unrefreshed, and 
 when he joined the Moran household after breakfast, 
 Haggleton observed that he looked tired. 
 
 " It's nothing," said Phillip ; " I'm not accustomed 
 to balls." 
 
 " You'd think he danced all night," laughed Jenny. 
 " Well, he danced just once." 
 
 Haggleton went out with Phillip. He, too, had slept
 
 126 THE BATTLE 
 
 badly; he had been awakened when Jenny came in, 
 and for more than an hour he had thought about this 
 boy, his son. He did not like the idea of his going 
 out with Jenny Moran. And he had resolved to have 
 a word with Phillip on the subject. 
 
 He began by talking about Margaret. 
 
 " She looks to me like a fine girl," he approved, 
 " but if I know anything about women, she's got a bit 
 of spirit in her, and you'd better cut out anybody 
 else." 
 
 " You mean Jenny ? " asked Phillip. 
 
 " Yes ; I don't believe Miss Lawrence will like your 
 going to balls with another girl." 
 
 Phillip started to explain the situation as well as 
 he could without revealing Jenny's previous life, but 
 Haggleton interrupted him : " I know about that ; I 
 have lived sixty years with my eyes wide open. It was 
 not so hard to guess as you think, young man." 
 
 " Then you must approve of my doing what I can to 
 help her?" 
 
 " Does it help her much to dance with her ? " re- 
 plied Haggleton dryly. 
 
 " It helps her to know that some one has faith in 
 her, doesn't it? It helps her to feel that some one is 
 kind to her? What would you have me do; let her 
 go to pieces ? " 
 
 " She'll probably do that, anyway," said Haggleton. 
 
 " There's more of your brutal philosophy," ex- 
 claimed Phillip. " Because a woman is down or a 
 man is down, you think that's a good reason why they 
 should stay down." 
 
 Haggleton thought a moment. " It may be worth
 
 AFTER THE BALL 127 
 
 while to do missionary work among these women ; I 
 don't know ; but . . ." 
 
 Phillip flushed in anger. " You dare to insinuate 
 that " 
 
 Haggleton smiled. 
 
 " I dare to insinuate that you're a vigorous young 
 fellow of twenty-four, and you'd better keep out of 
 temptation. See here, no offense, but facts are facts." 
 
 " I have a clear responsibility toward this girl," re- 
 torted Phillip. " I promised her sister to do what I 
 could for her and besides, she trusts me, and will 
 do as I tell her." He paused, and then said sharply: 
 " If other people had felt their responsibility toward 
 her as I do, she wouldn't be where she is to-day." 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" asked Haggleton. 
 " You're not trying to put the responsibility on me, 
 are you ? " 
 
 " I am, in a way. You control the New York Cen- 
 tral, don't you?" 
 
 " Why, I I suppose so," answered Haggleton, sur- 
 prised at this sudden turn. 
 
 " Well, the New York Central killed her husband 
 at one of its grade crossings in Yonkers. The law 
 tells you to put gates at these crossings, but you laugh 
 at the law, and every year you kill hundreds of inno- 
 cent citizens as you killed her husband. Then you re- 
 fused to pay her a cent of damages, and, as she was a 
 poor woman, she couldn't press the suit. So she was 
 left without a dollar in the world, and she had a little 
 baby, and well, the end of it was she went on the 
 town." 
 
 " I didn't know that," said Haggleton.
 
 128 THE BATTLE 
 
 " There's a good deal you rich men don't know, and 
 don't want to know. I tell you, Jenny Moran would 
 be a good woman to-day if she'd had a fair chance. 
 She's trying to do right now ; she's making a plucky 
 fight, and if you think I'm going to turn my back on 
 her as your criminal railroad did, then you're very 
 much mistaken." 
 
 Haggleton saw that further argument was useless. 
 After all, what could his worldly wisdom avail against 
 the impetuous and guileless chivalry of twenty-four? 
 So he dropped the subject.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 
 
 MEANWHILE, Haggleton had not allowed 
 Moran to forget his unwilling promise that 
 he would procure the place of the sick baker's assist- 
 ant for "Jackson," who was so eager to go to work and 
 in such sore need of something to do. The opportunity 
 presented itself sooner than he had dared to hope. 
 One morning, a day or two after the millionaire's sec- 
 ond tour with Phillip among his tenements and their 
 occupants, a boy arrived from the bakery to tell Moran 
 that he was to take charge of the night shift, and must 
 report that evening at six. Moran, thoughtful for 
 once of others, sent the boy back with word that he 
 could bring the assistant he had already spoken about, 
 and the answer came shortly afterwards by the same 
 carrier that he must not fail to do so. The helper had 
 " completely given out." It was typhoid beyond a 
 doubt. 
 
 Having warned Haggleton to take a good rest in 
 the afternoon, the baker disappeared, as usual. The 
 millionaire decided to pay another visit of inspection 
 to his tenements, but this time alone. It was a new 
 experience. Phillip was known and welcomed wher- 
 ever he went, and so were Gentle and Margaret. But 
 the owner of all this shameful property had the 
 
 129
 
 130 THE BATTLE 
 
 Strange experience of having doors slammed in his 
 face and of being ordered out of his own houses by 
 his own janitors, who looked upon him with darkest 
 suspicion. Yet, wherever he went, he could not help 
 seeing that conditions, bad as they were in themselves, 
 were aggravated at least fifty per cent by the shift- 
 lessness, the neglect, of his tenants. Haggleton was 
 beginning to formulate his own plans of tenement 
 reform. He would keep them to himself until the 
 proper moment came to lay them before his son. At 
 least, they would be practical. 
 
 By one he was back home, and at Jenny's suggestion 
 lay down to get some sleep in anticipation of a long 
 night's work. By five Moran came in, and, after an- 
 other tirade against capital, based upon an editorial 
 in the paper he had brought with him, bade him pre- 
 pare to accompany him. 
 
 The plumbing in the bakeshop was all defective, 
 Moran explained, as they made their way to the place, 
 the traps to sink and soil pipes being out of order, so 
 that the water was in danger of contamination. 
 
 " Not the water you use in making bread ? " ques- 
 tioned Haggleton. 
 
 " That's the only water we have," replied Moran ; 
 " it's the only water John J. gives us." 
 
 " Haggleton? What has he to do with it? " 
 
 "Just a little he owns the property." 
 
 Haggleton frowned. 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Am I sure ? " sneered Moran. " Haven't I seen 
 the rent receipts for five years? I'm foreman. Ah, 
 here we are ! "
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 131 
 
 They stopped before a six-story tenement on Mar- 
 ket Street, its dark hallway opening between a dingy 
 bakeshop and a dressmaking establishment where lay 
 figures in the window showed " the latest styles from 
 Paris." 
 
 " Careful now," cautioned Moran. " Hold on to the 
 railing. It's steep." 
 
 He led the way down into a deep hole under the 
 street, the iron steps slanting like a ladder, and slippery 
 with mud and ice. Haggleton followed cautiously and 
 found himself in a long, low basement lighted here and 
 there by flaring gas jets. As the door opened, he felt 
 a hot, foul breath as from a sour and moldy cavern. 
 The air was full of white dust, the walls were damp 
 and greenish white, bare bricks showing in places 
 where the plaster had fallen off, and the wooden floor 
 was sifted over with a mealy mixture of flour and 
 dirt. In the shadows he made out rows of flour bar- 
 rels and bags of flour, and through a disorder of 
 wooden troughs and mixing benches and piles of 
 wooden trays he saw at the far end the red eyes and 
 mouth of a wide oven for the baking. 
 
 It was about six o'clock, and already two men were 
 preparing for the night's work, stripping off filthy 
 clothing down to the undershirts, and throwing the 
 garments upon convenient flour barrels. The men 
 were pallid and hollow-eyed; one of them in a red 
 shirt coughed constantly; the other chewed tobacco. 
 They rolled up their sleeves, baring thin white arms, 
 and went to work, the tobacco chewer bending over the 
 kneading trough while the red-shirted man busied him- 
 self at the ovens. Moran explained that the former
 
 132 THE BATTLE 
 
 was " second hand " and the latter the " third hand." 
 It took four to run this bakeshop. 
 
 "Where's the boss?" 
 
 " Home, upstairs ; he works in the daytime. I'm in 
 charge at night." 
 
 As Haggleton's eyes became accustomed to the dust 
 and the uncertain light, he discovered a grayish figure 
 lying on a pile of bags behind a steaming vat. It was 
 a man asleep, his head resting on a sack of flour. 
 
 " That's the sick helper," said Moran. 
 
 " The one who has typhoid fever ? " 
 
 " We don't know what kind of fever it is." 
 
 " But he ought not to be here ; he ought not to be 
 sleeping on that sack of flour. You won't use the 
 flour, will you ? " 
 
 Moran laughed. " The flour he's sleeping on ? Sure, 
 we'll use it. We don't mind a little thing like that." 
 
 Haggleton took off his coat and prepared to work. 
 
 " I'll start you at something easy," said Moran. 
 " Down here." 
 
 They went to the ovens where the " third hand " 
 was taking out a batch of finished loaves, about a hun- 
 dred and fifty of them ranged along in yellow circles 
 on the hot brick floor. He stood at the iron door 
 thrusting in a long-handled, flat, wooden shovel, on 
 which, by a quick movement, he would slide two or 
 three of the crackling loaves, and then draw them out. 
 
 " Now," said Moran to Haggleton, " as he takes 'em 
 out. on the peel, you put 'em in these boxes." He 
 pointed to a pile of wooden trays. " When you get a 
 box full, brush 'em over with the stuff in that can. It's 
 potato water, to give 'em a good color,"
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 133 
 
 Moran illustrated this operation once, and then left 
 Haggleton to continue it, which he did to the best of 
 his ability. It was hot by the ovens, and each boxful 
 of loaves weighed thirty or forty pounds so that 
 before the task was finished both Haggleton and the 
 "third hand" were perspiring freely and were smeared 
 with black from the fire. Occasionally the " third 
 hand " would lay down his peel and stop to cough. 
 Then he would spit on the floor and go back to his 
 work. 
 
 " Now run 'em up to the shop," ordered Moran 
 when they had finished. " There, on that dumb-waiter. 
 A boy'll take 'em off." 
 
 This meant a second handling of all the loaves and 
 boxes, and a vigorous working of the ropes up and 
 down. Haggleton did not complain. 
 
 " You're a pretty fair helper," chuckled Moran. 
 " Ought to be worth six dollars a week." 
 
 " More than that," replied Haggleton. " Where did 
 you get the potato water I put on those loaves? I 
 mean the water, not the potatoes." 
 
 " There, at the sink. Yes, the one with no trap to 
 it the typhoid-fever sink. You're thinking it won't 
 do people any good to eat that bread. Maybe not. 
 Huh ! Now you can do some kneading." 
 
 They went to a long trough where the tobacco 
 chewer was in hand-to-hand conflict with a great mass 
 of dough, three or four hundred pounds, that seemed 
 to writhe and quiver in his arms like a live creature. 
 He had to bend far over this trough, and thrust his 
 bare arms down into the dough until his hands touched 
 the bottom. Then, with a strong effort, he would tear
 
 134 THE BATTLE 
 
 away fifty or sixty pounds from the end of the mass 
 and drag it over to the other end, and then go back for 
 more. And then for more. And so on, using the 
 utmost strength of arms and back, doing work which 
 a professional gymnast would call severe, and doing 
 it for half an hour at a stretch. 
 
 " You watch him awhile, and then do the rest," 
 said Moran. 
 
 Haggleton watched the " second hand," and pres- 
 ently took his turn at the trough and struggled with 
 the dough. For twenty minutes he turned the sticky, 
 sodden mass over and over upon itself, kneading it 
 and crushing it down and tearing it apart until his 
 whole body ached. 
 
 " That'll do," relented Moran finally. 
 
 " What are those brown stains in the trough ? " 
 asked Haggleton. 
 
 Moran examined the stains and frowned. " That 
 fool has been dribbling tobacco juice in the dough 
 again. Petro," he said sharply, " look there ! Haven't 
 I told you to spit on the floor if you have to spit ? " 
 
 Petro mumbled his penitence, and promised to be 
 careful in the future. 
 
 After this Haggleton helped the " third hand " swab 
 out the oven and make a fresh fire of coke and wood 
 in the corner of it for the next baking. Then he 
 helped Moran, who was now shaping the finished 
 dough into loaves, weighing each one on a scale, and 
 then fitting them into " raising " boxes, each of which 
 had to be separately brought and then separately car- 
 ried away. 
 
 " We'll make a baker of you yet, Jackson," grinned
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 135 
 
 the foreman. " Before these loaves go into the oven, 
 we brush 'em over with eggs to get a nice brown. 
 You can do that. Here's the can and brush, and the 
 eggs are in that box. Break half a dozen in the can 
 and go ahead." 
 
 Haggleton obeyed, but presently came back to 
 Moran, holding the can at arm's length and wrinkling 
 his nose with little sniffs. " These eggs are bad." 
 
 " Are, eh ? Well, what do you expect for thirty 
 cents a hundred ? " 
 
 " I didn't think you would use bad eggs," said Hag- 
 gleton. 
 
 " You're not here to think, Mister Jackson. I told 
 you what to do ; now do it." 
 
 Haggleton went back to his task, and for ten minutes 
 plied the brush, smearing the unbaked loaves with this 
 slimy and sickening mixture. Then he broke more 
 eggs and smeared more loaves. Most of the eggs 
 were bad. Finally, he finished the job, and another 
 batch was ready. 
 
 So the night advanced, and Haggleton worked with 
 scarcely a pause; he rolled barrels and dragged bags 
 as fresh flour was needed ; he carried coke for the fires 
 and split wood; he helped at the sponging tubs; he 
 sifted flour; he bent over the kneading trough; he 
 carried boxes ; he drew water at the sink ; he worked 
 the dumb-waiter; he stood by at the ovens; and he 
 never complained. At ten o'clock he thought his 
 strength had failed him ; he was sore all over and sick 
 and weak, but he forced himself to keep on. 
 
 At midnight he asked for a few minutes' rest, but 
 Moran shook his head ; he must do his work ; another
 
 136 THE BATTLE 
 
 batch of loaves was ready ready for the eggs. The 
 eggs ! . Haggleton tried to respond as before ; he was 
 game, he would not give up to this brute, but his knees 
 bent under him ; he felt his lips going white, and a feel- 
 ing of nausea overcame him. His stomach at last re- 
 volted, and he had a violent fit of vomiting. 
 
 " Knocked out, eh ? " said Moran. " Lie down 
 there." 
 
 The millionaire lay down on some bags of flour, 
 and Moran threw an empty sack over him. He 
 groaned and closed his eyes, and for a long time he 
 did not move. 
 
 Moran went on with his work. 
 
 Haggleton fell into a troubled sleep, and thought he 
 was riding out a storm at sea. About two o'clock he 
 was wakened suddenly by the clanging of a fire engine. 
 He sat up weakly, and leaned against a bag of flour. 
 The air was stifling hot and unspeakably foul. The 
 men were at their same routine, but the " third hand " 
 had thrown off his red shirt and was plying his peel at 
 the oven bare to the waist. Haggleton could see the 
 sweat running down his arms and back as he handled 
 the loaves. 
 
 Presently Moran came over to him, and sat down on 
 a barrel. " Feeling better? " 
 
 Haggleton nodded. 
 
 " It always makes a new man sick. You'll get used 
 to it." 
 
 " I hope not," said Haggleton. " Are there many 
 bakeshops like this in New York?" 
 
 " Dozens like this, and some worse." 
 
 " Not worse than this?"
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 137 
 
 " Huh ! " retorted Moran, " I'd like to show you one 
 on Allen Street. Dogs and chickens all about, and 
 hey, Petro," he called, " roll that barrel here." 
 
 Petro rolled over a barrel filled with crumbs of sour 
 bread and moldy dough and sweepings from the floor. 
 
 " See that ? " continued Moran. " We let it go as 
 garbage, but there are bakers who use it. Yes, sir, 
 they soak it in stuff that takes away the smell, then 
 they dry it, and put in currants and molasses and bake 
 it into cakes. And God knows who eats 'em." 
 
 " That's an outrage ! " exclaimed Haggleton. 
 
 Moran leaned toward him with a gleam of hatred. 
 " I'll tell you another outrage, Mister Jackson ; it's 
 when a landlord takes big rent for a rotten cellar like 
 this and won't fix the plumbing. Do you see that little 
 door? Just look in when your stomach gets steady 
 and say how it strikes you. No wonder we're sick. I 
 worked in a cellar bakeshop on Hester Street where 
 the plumbing was so bad we got a back flow from the 
 sewer every time it rained hard, and the whole floor 
 was well, I'll cut out the rest." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " muttered Haggleton, " but all this 
 must be against the law ? " 
 
 " Much good that does." 
 
 " You mean the law isn't enforced ? " 
 
 " That's what I mean." 
 
 " Why isn't it enforced ? " 
 
 Moran laughed harshly. " That's a fine question to 
 ask, why a law isn't enforced. Why aren't the laws 
 enforced against trusts and railroads ? Because some- 
 body has damned good grafting reasons for not en- 
 forcing them. It's the same here."
 
 138 THE BATTLE 
 
 " H'm ! " said Haggleton. " How many bakeshops 
 are there in New York ? " 
 
 " Twenty-five hundred or so." 
 
 " How many men to a shop ? " 
 
 " The little shops have four, but the big shops have 
 ten or twenty. There must be fifteen thousand bakers 
 in New York, easy." 
 
 " And most of them live in tenements? " 
 
 " Where do you think they live ? At the Waldorf ? " 
 
 Haggleton went on quietly. " You say there's a 
 lot of sickness among them ? " 
 
 " My God ! " burst out Moran, " of course there's 
 a lot of sickness. How can men work in holes like this 
 and not get sick? There's rheumatism and asthma 
 and fever and consumption. That's the worst con- 
 sumption. We've got it, hundreds of us, and we 
 spread it; sometimes we get it here and carry it to 
 the tenements; sometimes we get it in the tenements 
 and carry it here, and either way the millionaires are 
 to blame, only " He paused, and a grim smile 
 spread over his thin face. 
 
 " Go on," said Haggleton. 
 
 " You know bread is spongy stuff, and takes up any- 
 thing near it, germs and dirt and bad water. Well, 
 we make the bread, but they eat it." 
 
 " Not this bread ! " 
 
 " How do you know who eats this bread ? How do 
 you know who makes the bread you eat ? A quarter of 
 a million loaves and cakes are made every day in New 
 York by sick bakers that's putting it low and some- 
 body eats 'em, germs and all. Well ? " 
 
 " The germs are killed in the baking."
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 139 
 
 " How about germs on the crust ? Besides, baking 
 may not kill the germs. The heat in the middle of a 
 good-sized loaf is way under two hundred, and it takes 
 two hundred and twelve to make sure of killing germs. 
 I read how a London doctor tried it, and found thir- 
 teen different kinds of microbes in a loaf that had been 
 baked ! Yes, sir, found 'em alive and kicking." 
 
 Moran went back to his work, leaving the other to 
 ponder this. It was after three o'clock, and already 
 the early wagons were rattling through the streets, 
 gathering up bread for the city's breakfast. Haggle- 
 ton had seen one night's work in one bakery. He had 
 watched the making of five or six hundred of the mil- 
 lion or more loaves required every day to stay a city's 
 hunger. He had seen these loaves handled by two 
 consumptives in a place where nothing was clean, 
 where the very dust in the air was tainted with disease. 
 He thought about this for a long time, and with his 
 thoughts, by habit of years, came a plan of action ; and 
 presently when Moran returned he saw in Haggle- 
 ton's face such a look of purpose and resourcefulness 
 that he marveled and said, only half in jest : " I sup- 
 pose you're going to show us how to run these bake- 
 shops ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Haggleton, with a snap of decision, " I 
 think I am."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 
 
 MORAN had taken a vicious delight in making 
 Jackson's work in the bakery as hard as pos- 
 sible. The millionaire never forgot, in later years, 
 that first night in the murky, dirty cellar, the sickening 
 moist odor of the fresh bread, the nausea it gave him, 
 the exhaustion caused by labor almost as hard, he 
 thought, as that of a blacksmith. He had staggered 
 home dizzy, on trembling knees, too weary almost to 
 undress. The experience had taught him a lesson, 
 however. Now he understood why it is so hard for 
 the poor to keep scrupulously clean. 
 
 Moran had gone to bed in his usual fashion, with- 
 out cleaning himself at all. Haggleton had had to 
 exert all his will power not to follow his example. He 
 had shakily, but determinedly, removed the dough 
 sticking to his arms and fingers, brushed from his 
 gray hair the flour that had whitened it, neatly folded 
 his clothes, washed himself and finally sunk into a 
 sleep from which he awakened in the morning unre- 
 freshed. 
 
 And yet, stiff and sore though he was, in a way he 
 began to feel better than he had felt in many a long 
 day. His digestion seemed to benefit by the grueling 
 work, at which he stuck for a week, undeterred by 
 
 140
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 141 
 
 Gentle's warnings, put on his mettle by Phillip's covert 
 looks of curiosity. 
 
 His plan had been matured on the morning after 
 his first night's experience, but he was accustomed to 
 move cautiously until he was ready. And so he had 
 learned all there was to learn about the trade before he 
 resigned his place as substitute fourth helper. The 
 man for whom he substituted had been removed to the 
 hospital. 
 
 Moran jeered at him when he announced his de- 
 termination to " throw up the job." Phillip, when he 
 heard of it, looked astonished, then disappointed. 
 Gentle's face was inscrutable. Jenny approved, be- 
 cause she thought that Mr. Jackson could find some- 
 thing better to do. But inwardly she wondered a little 
 where his next week's board money was to come from. 
 Joe sympathized on general principles with every man 
 who stopped working. It put him in countenance. 
 
 Jackson, however, who had selected Sunday morn- 
 ing to make his announcement, when all the members 
 of his little circle of acquaintances in the district were 
 present, with the exception of Margaret Lawrence, 
 whom as yet he had not seen since that first brief 
 glimpse of her, quietly answered Moran's sneer: 
 
 " You asked me that first night," he said, " if I 
 was going to show you how to run these bakeshops, 
 and I told you that I was. Well, I am going to do it. 
 You think that I am through with bread baking? 
 Why, I am only just beginning. Listen, all of you; 
 I am going to take you in with me." 
 
 " Not me," said Gentle. 
 
 " Not you, Mr. Gentle, if you won't come in."
 
 142 THE BATTLE 
 
 "And you Phillip?" asked the old diver. 
 
 " I am going to listen to what he has to say," an- 
 swered the young man cautiously. 
 
 Haggleton saw that he had won a victory far greater 
 than the success of his projected bakery trust he had 
 succeeded in interesting Phillip. So he proceeded 
 forthwith to question the suspicious Moran, as the 
 quickest way of unfolding his plan to the young man. 
 
 " If you're not in a hurry, Moran," he remarked as 
 they finished breakfast, " I'd like to ask some ques- 
 tions." 
 
 " About bakeshops ? " 
 
 " Yes. Does your boss make much out of his busi- 
 ness?" 
 
 Moran shook his head. " When he's paid rent and 
 wages, there's just enough left to take care of his fam- 
 ily in a tenement." 
 
 " What's the rent of that basement? " 
 
 " Thirty dollars." 
 
 Haggleton thought a moment. 
 
 " Suppose I offered him the basement, rent free, and 
 guaranteed as much business as he does now, do you 
 think he'd go into a scheme I've got? " 
 
 " Ye es." 
 
 " Well, there's money in these bakeshops, money 
 for all of us. What kind of a man is your boss, any- 
 way? He never was around at night, so I don't know 
 him." 
 
 " The boss? He's Italian used to be a ragpicker." 
 
 " H'm ! Can he be managed ? " 
 
 " He can if he wants to," growled Moran, " but 
 you've got to show him first."
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 143 
 
 " I'll show him all right," said Haggleton, " but tell 
 me things straight. This is a case of building up a 
 business understand ? " 
 
 " Huh ! " grunted Moran. " What do you know 
 about running a bakeshop ? " 
 
 Haggleton smiled. " What do you pay for flour? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Six or seven dollars a barrel." 
 
 " Ah, that's how you buy it? " 
 
 * Sure, thirty or forty barrels a week." 
 
 " Whom do you buy it from ? " 
 
 " Jobbers." 
 
 Haggleton looked at him steadily, his eyes showing 
 half pity, half contempt. " No wonder you people are 
 poor ! You you don't know any more about business 
 than children in the street." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " Miserable, petty, shoe-string methods, saving pen- 
 nies on sour crumbs and bad eggs when you might do 
 things in a big clean way and make a fortune ! " 
 
 " A fortune ? " asked Phillip incredulously. 
 
 " Yes, sir, a fortune. And I'll show you how." 
 
 Haggleton asked more questions, going into details 
 of the bread-making industry, wages, methods of work, 
 cost of equipment, etc., moving rapidly from point to 
 point, until presently he came upon one fact of master 
 importance, that there was a machine for kneading 
 dough a machine run by electricity which would do 
 the work of six men and turn out better bread than 
 could be made by hand. 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed Haggleton, " now we're getting 
 at it ! I'd like to see that machine."
 
 144 THE BATTLE 
 
 " You'll have to go uptown to a big bakeshop." 
 
 " None down here ? " 
 
 Moran scowled. " What do you think we are? A 
 machine like that costs six hundred and fifty dollars." 
 
 Haggleton looked pleased. " Good ! Now, how 
 many bakeshops are there near yours, say within two 
 or three blocks ? " 
 
 Moran counted them up. 
 
 " Nine ten eleven " 
 
 " That's enough. We'll make a combination with 
 six or eight; we'll sell them flour for less than they 
 pay the jobbers and " 
 
 " How will you do that ? " interrupted Gentle. 
 
 " We'll get it by the car load direct from the mills. 
 Then we'll have one of those machines and do all the 
 kneading for the combination." 
 
 Phillip stared at Haggleton, who went on quietly: 
 " You see how easy it is ? We save on wages and 
 materials; we do a bigger business because we sell 
 better bread ; so we make money both ways." 
 
 " It's a regular trust," said Gentle. 
 
 " Yes," admitted Haggleton, " it's a bakeshop trust." 
 
 " What capital have you got ? " asked Phillip. 
 
 "Ever hear of promoters?" asked the millionaire 
 tersely. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, I am promoting this. The bakers need that 
 machine, the manufacturer is perfectly willing to sup- 
 ply it on terms that guarantee him his money, even 
 if he has to wait for it. A chattel mortgage given 
 by the members of the trust I am about to organize 
 will be good security, unless I am much mistaken.
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 145 
 
 I could use three hundred dollars to advantage right 
 now, but I do not need them." 
 
 " Three hundred dollars ! " sniffed Moran. " What 
 can you do with that ? " 
 
 Haggleton bared his teeth like an old wolf. " With 
 three hundred dollars you can get a grip on Manhat- 
 tan Island, and never let go, if you know how." 
 
 Phillip was deeply impressed. He was stimulated, 
 yet vaguely alarmed. Haggleton was awakening in 
 him qualities of mind and vague longings that had lain 
 dormant thus far, and that he recognized now with 
 some uneasiness. He had sometimes wondered if he 
 possessed business ability, but had given the matter 
 little thought, feeling sure that his work lay in quite 
 another field ; he was a fighter for high principle, a 
 champion of the downtrodden, not a groveler for 
 gold ; yet, somehow, he was beginning to feel the fas- 
 cination of buying and selling, of making shrewd com- 
 binations in the market, and of winning out by this 
 or that strategy in the great game of trade. He tried 
 to brush all this aside as a sordid and unworthy ap- 
 peal, assuring himself that his interest was only a 
 passing one, and that he would certainly never allow 
 himself to come under the ascendancy of this man 
 Haggleton, whose selfish life and cruel methods of 
 money conquest he held in abhorrence. Still, he had 
 to admit that this bakeshop experiment was very 
 interesting, and if it resulted in giving better bread 
 to the people with better conditions in the making, 
 why, it was not for him to oppose it. So it was with 
 strangely mixed motives that he exclaimed impul- 
 sively :
 
 146 THE BATTLE 
 
 " I can furnish the three hundred dollars ! " 
 
 Haggleton suppressed the feeling of exultation that 
 rose within him as he recognized himself in his son. 
 He quietly said : " That will hasten things somewhat," 
 and proceeded to give his directions. 
 
 In the morning Phillip was to buy one of these 
 kneading machines, paying a hundred dollars down, 
 the balance being arranged for in successive monthly 
 payments, secured by a chattel mortgage. He Hag- 
 gleton would get the bakers to be jointly responsible 
 here with them. If they objected, he could give them 
 a bonus from their capital for the next month's rent. 
 
 Then Phillip must find a bakeshop with electric 
 street connections for the machine. Did Moran know 
 one? Yes, in Catherine Street. Good! They must 
 get the boss there into the combination, show him all 
 the advantages, and, if necessary, to give him a bonus. 
 The kneading machine must be set up there. It 
 wouldn't cost this man a cent, as the combination 
 would assume all expenses. 
 
 The rest would be easy. Six other bakers must 
 agree to buy from the combination thirty or forty 
 barrels of flour a week, or whatever quantity they 
 usually bought, on the express stipulation that they 
 got it at ten per cent off the jobbers' price. And they 
 must make themselves responsible for this amount 
 of flour, so many car loads, by signing a joint note 
 payable to the mill owners in thirty days. 
 
 Phillip thought that the mill owners might refuse 
 to accept such a note, but Haggleton was sure it 
 could be accomplished. There were many flour mills 
 in the country with New York agents, all hustling
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 147 
 
 for new business, and some of them would be glad 
 to get the orders of the combination, even with a 
 slight risk. 
 
 "Extraordinary!" exclaimed Phillip. "It it 
 sounds like a great idea. I don't see why it hasn't 
 been tried before." 
 
 " Because no one with brains has ever bothered 
 with these little bakeshops. Half the small retail 
 business in New York could be organized like that if 
 anyone wanted to take the trouble." 
 
 " I wonder if that's true ? " reflected Phillip, and 
 then, after a moment : " How can one machine knead 
 the dough from half a dozen bakeshops ? " 
 
 " That's easy," said Haggleton; " we'll have a horse 
 and truck." 
 
 " What, to carry the machine ? " 
 
 " No, to carry the dough. Each baker will mix his 
 own flour in his own sponging trough, then we'll put 
 the troughs on a truck and haul them to the place 
 where we run the machine. When the flour is kneaded, 
 we'll haul them back." He turned to Moran. " Any 
 objection to that?" 
 
 Moran sneered. " Dough on a truck it sounds 
 crazy, but I guess it's all right." 
 
 " How long will the kneading take ? " questioned 
 Phillip. 
 
 " Ten minutes for one batch of loaves," answered 
 the baker " say seven hundred pounds of dough. 
 That's with the machine. It would take a man an 
 hour." 
 
 " You see what we save," remarked Haggleton. 
 
 " Are these troughs on wheels ? " pursued Phillip.
 
 148 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Sure," said Moran. 
 
 " Allowing half an hour for each batch," calculated 
 Haggleton " I mean for kneading and hauling both 
 ways that gives us twenty-four batches in twelve 
 hours. Say four thousand loaves. That's eight thou- 
 sand pounds of flour; four tons a day, or twenty- 
 eight tons a week for the combination. There's a 
 nice profit in that when you get it by the car load." 
 
 " It sounds good," mused Phillip, " but are you 
 sure of enough bakeshops for the combination ? " 
 
 " We'll have six before the week's out. That is, 
 if you fix it so that we're trusted for flour by the car 
 load. You'd better get busy." 
 
 Phillip turned in surprise. 
 
 " That's right," said Haggleton ; " we look to you to 
 get us flour direct from the mills; we're going to cut 
 out the jobbers' profit." 
 
 " And you're going to risk all in this scheme ? " 
 
 "What are we risking?" answered the old man. 
 " Flour has a permanent value and so has a kneading 
 machine." 
 
 " Suppose these bakers refuse to join your com- 
 bination ? " 
 
 "Refuse? Does a man refuse good money if you 
 offer it to him? Why, within ten days all the little 
 bakers around here will be offering premiums for a 
 chance to come in with us." 
 
 Gentle had watched Phillip no less closely than had 
 Haggleton, and had observed with dismay the stir- 
 ring of the spirit whose quickening his mother had 
 dreaded the spirit of gain, the love of material suc- 
 cess of self-seeking. But Haggleton had a right to a
 
 HAGGLETON TAKES COMMAND 149 
 
 fair field in his undertaking; therefore, the old diver 
 contented himself with ironically congratulating his 
 ward on his entrance upon a business life which, he 
 doubted not, was undertaken solely for the purpose of 
 giving better and cheaper bread to the poor. 
 
 Phillip smiled uneasily, but Moran furnished a 
 diversion. 
 
 He had been listening with increasing hatred and 
 jealousy to this fellow Jackson, " down and out " like 
 himself, but who, instead of joining the enemies of 
 the capitalism that had defeated him, was already 
 planning to rise again, and who bitterest thought of 
 all seemed likely to succeed. Now he began. 
 
 Had he Moran not had schemes after the trust 
 had put him out of business? Hundreds of them! 
 Had he carried them out? Of course not. Why not? 
 Because a scheme without ample capital is of no earth- 
 ly use to anyone. If you^ propose it to a man with 
 money, he doesn't give you the money; he simply 
 steals the scheme from you. The cards are stacked 
 against a poor man. And so on, and so on, into 
 another violent harangue against the sins of capital, 
 with curses for all rich men in general, and for John 
 J. Haggleton, the incarnation of predatory wealth, in 
 particular. Moran was a fatalist, because fatalism 
 is a dogma that saves the self-respect of those who 
 drift unresisting along the line of least resistance. 
 Gentle, who had known him for many years, was be- 
 ginning to feel uneasy. Yes, the man accepted things 
 as they were while snarling at them but some day 
 he might turn, and there is always a moment when the 
 coward is more dangerous than the man of courage.
 
 ISO THE BATTLE 
 
 Moran was talking violence of late with increasing 
 vehemence; violence in general, to be true, to be 
 practiced by others, but still who knew what this 
 harping upon sanguinary plans might ultimately sug- 
 gest to his tired, weakened intellect? He now con- 
 cluded with the quite familiar statement that the world 
 would never go right until they had hung them all ! 
 
 Haggleton, too, was studying Moran with increasing 
 attention. It was quite an experience to hear himself 
 denounced in the most intemperate epithets before 
 his own son. But Moran had already been assigned 
 to a well-defined place in Haggleton's plans for the 
 winning of Phillip's love, admiration, and confidence. 
 Moran was to be used as an object lesson at the 
 proper moment. He was to be tempted. That he 
 would fall, abjure his theories, forget his hatreds, 
 forgive, and " come in," was a foregone conclusion.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 
 
 MEANWHILE, Haggleton had not forgotten 
 that other boast of his, that he would make the 
 neglected Moran home as clean and orderly as a New 
 England farmhouse. 
 
 It had, indeed, undergone a marvelous transforma- 
 tion since that first day, when he asked Jenny's per- 
 mission to assist her a little in " redding up." It had 
 all been effected at the cost of a very small outlay of 
 cash, but of a very liberal expenditure of elbow grease 
 and planning. The marble clocks had been sold, the 
 hatstand, and the battered iron bedsteads. They had 
 fetched the thirty dollars Haggleton had appraised 
 them at. He himself had conducted the negotiations. 
 
 The room was clean as a New England farmhouse, 
 and as orderly. Jenny took renewed pride in her per- 
 sonal neatness now, and in her efficiency as a house- 
 keeper. 
 
 The iron beds had been replaced by sleeping couches, 
 neatly covered; the cooking stove was hidden behind 
 a homemade screen, Joe's handiwork; and all around 
 the room ran shelves with cretonne curtains, behind 
 which were kept the many things that formerly had 
 littered the floor and been piled in corners, in hopeless 
 confusion. Under one of the couches a tin bath tub
 
 152 THE BATTLE 
 
 was snugly put away. It was the pride of all but 
 Moran, who looked upon it with disdain. Yet even 
 he was growing neater in his ways, under the com- 
 pulsion of his new environment. 
 
 Jackson was doing things, there could be no doubt 
 about that. Joe watched him as he did them, with 
 persistent skepticism that had to change its ground 
 constantly as improvement after improvement was 
 carried out. Gentle was deeply interested, Phillip was 
 enthusiastic, Jenny thought her new boarder's in- 
 genuity as a housekeeper wonderful. She forgot the 
 organized work that he succeeded in making them all 
 contribute. 
 
 But brightened though her life now was in many 
 external ways, Jenny passed her days in profound un- 
 happiness. She loved Phillip, oh ! how she loved him ! 
 She knew very well that she had no right to love 
 him, and that there was small chance that he would 
 ever love her. How could a man love a girl from the 
 " Haymarket " ? Still, she was pretty, very pretty at 
 her best, and, after all, Phillip was a man ! 
 
 The taint of her past was seared into her soul. She 
 thought that she knew men and their besetting weak- 
 ness! She was pretty! She knew that she had nice 
 eyes and pretty hands, and she remembered with a 
 mingling of shame and satisfaction various extrava- 
 gant things said about her charms by men who had 
 been " stuck on her." 
 
 But alas, what availed her beauty if it made no ap- 
 peal to Phillip! Ah, that was the point, perhaps it 
 did appeal to him. Several times she had felt his 
 eyes on her in a way that well, she could not be
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 153 
 
 sure, he was finer than most men, but usually such 
 a look meant no, that was impossible ! She was the 
 last woman Phillip would admire, the very last. Yet, 
 the other day, when she had caught his hand in sud- 
 den gratitude for a helpful word, he had held her 
 hand in his and pressed it, perhaps a mere pressure 
 of encouragement, but, after all, it was a warm, soft, 
 little hand and he might have liked it. 
 
 Then there was the evening when, believing her 
 absent, he had entered her bedroom. How he had 
 started back in confused apology, although there was 
 really no offense, for the others had often seen her 
 partly undressed and taken it as a matter of course. 
 Everyone knew there was no privacy in a tenement, 
 so why make such a fuss over a glimpse of bare arms 
 and shoulders? The harm was in the thought, not 
 in the fact, and it occurred to Jenny that Phillip 
 might have enjoyed seeing her white neck and shapely 
 bust, and that his embarrassment was caused by a 
 half-guilty feeling in himself. Ah, if that were true! 
 If she could only know! 
 
 These reflections had gradually led her to conceive 
 a definite plan; she must talk to Phillip alone, she 
 must find some way of getting him to the flat in the 
 afternoon when the others were away. How could 
 she manage this? She could never ask him herself 
 that would spoil everything. He must come there for 
 some reason and find her accidentally, and she must 
 be prepared for him. Joe must help her in getting 
 him there. 
 
 This plan was busily working in her brain one 
 morning shortly after the launching of the bakery
 
 154 THE BATTLE 
 
 trust, as she and Joe were setting things to right in 
 the room and discussing Mr. Jackson's achievements. 
 
 " He is a wonder," reflected Jenny, half aloud. 
 
 " Yes, he is a wonder, all right, all right." 
 
 " He's been here only a few weeks," continued 
 Jenny, " and look at the place." 
 
 " The wonder is," commented Joe, " that Moran lets 
 him do it. He doesn't love him. Guess he is jealous 
 of him because he can do things." 
 
 He pulled down the sleeves of his clean shirt over 
 his wrists and stroked down his waistcoat. Jackson 
 had shown him how to press his own clothes, explain- 
 ing incidentally that thus they got still another re- 
 turn from the coal they burned. Joe was beginning 
 to take an interest in his apparel, such as it was, in- 
 stead of neglecting his appearance and contenting him- 
 self with dreaming of the sporty clothes he would buy 
 some day. He was waking up in other ways as well. 
 Now he suddenly startled Jenny with a momentous 
 announcement : 
 
 " Say, Jen, beginnin' to-day, I draw ten bones a 
 week if I cut out pool rooms." 
 
 " Ten dollars a week ? How ? " 
 
 " In the bakery scheme." 
 
 " The bakery scheme," repeated Jenny thoughtfully. 
 "That's what Phil is talking about all the time 
 now." 
 
 " Phil listens to what Mr. Jackson has to say, all 
 right. He takes a lot of interest in him. He's here 
 most of the time he isn't on his own job." 
 
 " Yes, he's here most of the time." Jenny looked 
 at the diver's picture on the wall, her eyes widening
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 155 
 
 a little. Joe, as always when Phillip was discussed 
 between them, watched her closely. 
 
 " You remember what I told you, Joe ? " 
 "About Phil? Sure." Joe grinned. " Little Jenny 
 wants him all to herself. And if she can't have him 
 for herself then the trained nurse lady that took away 
 our dear little star boarders to the hospital had better 
 look out for herself. How are the kids getting 
 along? " 
 
 " Benny is pretty bad," Jenny replied absently. Her 
 mind was fixed on her own problem in life. Joe, 
 seeing this, repressed some humorous reminiscences of 
 the two children and returned to the subject of Mar- 
 garet Lawrence. 
 
 " I'll tell you one thing," he observed ; " if I was 
 Miss Margaret, you'd not see me driving below Twen- 
 ty-third Street. No, ma'am. I'd make brother cough 
 up. He's got plenty of ' dough/ or his wife has." 
 " How do you know that she has a rich brother?" 
 " How do I know? Why, you knew it before me." 
 " I know nothing whatever about her." 
 " Why, Jenny, weren't you the wet nurse for his 
 kid?" 
 
 "Good God!" 
 
 Jenny stared at him with startled eyes, then shifted 
 her gaze beyond him. Her face assumed an expres- 
 sion of wonder, of dismay, then gradually changed, 
 as if a light were dawning before her. She began 
 to walk up and down restlessly, gesticulating, mutter- 
 ing to herself. At every turn she took she looked up 
 at Phillip's picture. Joe's curiosity got the better of 
 him.
 
 156 THE BATTLE 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, nothing. You say Miss Margaret 
 is the sister of Howard Lawrence, up in Sixty-third 
 Street, near the Park, the one with the rich wife ? " 
 
 " Yes. Didn't you know it? " 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 " Sure." 
 
 Jenny became silent again, pursuing some thought. 
 Joe lighted a cigarette and awaited developments. 
 Here was something new and unsuspected from her 
 past, the past that she kept so carefully to herself. 
 
 But what was it? He gave a hasty side glance at 
 the possibilities of a situation in life which somebody 
 who has nothing knows something worth knowing 
 about somebody who has plenty of " dough." . . . 
 
 Joe was being trained by Mr. Jackson, but the old 
 Adam was still strong in him. Money without hav- 
 ing to work for it was still his ideal. Blackmail 
 was not repugnant to him as a means to the attain- 
 ment of that desirable end. What a fool Jenny was, 
 after all! 
 
 Suddenly Jenny stopped. She had reached a de- 
 cision. The time had come to put her stratagem into 
 execution. 
 
 " Well, what about it? " asked Joe. 
 
 "What about what?" 
 
 " About Howard Lawrence ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing I I thought how strange it was 
 that that his sister should be down here among us. 
 I heard them talk about her. That's all." 
 
 " Is it ? " thought Joe to himself. " Not by a long 
 shot. You can't fool me."
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 157 
 
 "What time is it?" The girl's voice was eager, 
 hopeful, victorious. 
 
 " The factory clock says half past ten ; the alarm 
 clock says twenty minutes to, but that's always fast 
 since Mr. Jackson came here." 
 
 " Listen, Joe ; be serious," pleaded Jenny. " You 
 said that you would help me. Now you must. I want 
 to be alone with Phillip I have an idea." 
 
 " Go on, my romantic sister-in-law. I will help 
 you." 
 
 " I want you to write Phil a note," explained Jenny 
 feverishly. " Tell him that you are in great trouble, 
 and must see him at once, here. Write that you are 
 waiting, and everything depends on his not losing a 
 minute. And tell him to come alone; do you under- 
 stand alone ! " 
 
 " Huh ! You're no fool, Jenny." Joe looked at his 
 sister-in-law in real admiration. 
 
 Poor Jenny's thoughts flew back to her bitterly won 
 knowledge of the lower side of men, and to the loose, 
 filmy garment hidden at the bottom of her trunk on 
 the day when she had said farewell to the old life 
 for Phillip's sake! 
 
 She was beautiful; she knew it! He should see it, 
 know it, too. Her beauty and this strange discovery 
 which she had suddenly made concerning Margaret 
 Lawrence's relationship She held two cards now; 
 she would play them both she would win ! 
 
 Her eyes shone. 
 
 Joe read her thoughts fairly accurately. Whatever 
 it was that she knew about Howard Lawrence was to 
 be used as an argument to win Phillip's love, or, at
 
 158 THE BATTLE 
 
 least, to weaken Margaret's hold upon his affection. 
 He immediately set to work to formulate some scheme 
 by which he might draw some advantage for himself 
 from this secret, even if he did not know what it 
 was. So he began. 
 
 " Why don't you write the note yourself ? " 
 
 " Because if I did he would not come alone. . . . 
 Joe, haven't you noticed that he is afraid to be alone 
 with me ? " 
 
 " Can you blame him ? " 
 
 " Be serious ; do be serious ; help me ! " 
 
 " All right, Jenny, I will, sure as you live. But, 
 say, what is there in it for me? I am not askin' you 
 to give me money I'm only askin' for the loan of a 
 dollar until I begin to draw my salary from Mr. Jack- 
 son." 
 
 Jenny did not hesitate a moment. Impatiently she 
 pulled out her purse and handed over the money. 
 
 " You will make the note strong?" she asked anx- 
 iously. " He must come." 
 
 "Don't you worry. Strong? It will bring tears 
 to his eyes. I'll write it on Salvation Army paper. 
 That'll fetch him ! You leave that to me." 
 
 He was already at the door. 
 
 " This is my last flyer, Jen," he said. " After this 
 I settle down to business with Jackson Jackson & 
 Caffrey." 
 
 She heard him galloping down the hall, stop, and 
 talk to somebody Phillip? Her heart gave a bound, 
 but no, that was not his clear, ringing voice. It was 
 Mr. Jackson. She made a movement of impatience, 
 then a wave of self-pity came over her. She had been
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 159 
 
 so near the fulfillment of her plot; she was keyed up 
 to its execution ; everything was prepared, and now 
 she must wait for another opportunity, or at least 
 make one. She glanced up at Phillip's picture, and her 
 eyes dwelt on it lovingly. 
 
 Haggleton entered briskly. 
 
 As he came in, he surprised Jenny's look, so elo- 
 quent, so all-betraying. There were few things that 
 escaped his sharp eyes. Jenny's past he had divined 
 long ago. 
 
 " Morning, Jenny," he said pleasantly. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Jackson." 
 
 Haggleton stood beside her, looking up with her 
 at the portrait. 
 
 " He's a fine young fellow, that Phillip Ames, isn't 
 he?" 
 
 "Phil? Indeed, he is. But if anybody tells you 
 that he is easy to understand " 
 
 " Gentle seems to understand him." 
 
 " Gentle thinks he does. Say, Mr. Jackson, you 
 have Gentle worried, all right." 
 
 "I? How?" 
 
 " Oh, with all this bakeshop business. Before you 
 came, it was nothing but the wrongs of the poor. Now 
 it's nothing but money-making schemes." 
 
 Haggleton looked at her attentively. She was about 
 to confirm the evidence of his own observations. Per- 
 haps he had made even more progress with Phillip 
 than he thought. 
 
 " You think Phillip is interested ? " he asked cas- 
 ually. 
 
 " Interested ? You know he is interested. Why,
 
 160 THE BATTLE 
 
 yesterday, Gentle was trying to talk tenement-house 
 reform to Phil, but he hardly listened. He was fig- 
 uring out the profits of that electrical machine for 
 kneading bread." 
 
 "Good!" 
 
 Haggleton looked immensely pleased. He knew all 
 this, but it was agreeable to hear it from other lips. 
 
 " I never saw Phil that way before," continued 
 Jenny, slowly, as if pondering some problem that had 
 suddenly presented itself. 
 
 " You like him, don't you? " 
 
 " Everybody likes him. I," she hesitated, " / love 
 him." 
 
 Jenny was still pursuing that new thought of hers. 
 She continued, more slowly, as if feeling her way : 
 
 " Yes, he is changed. And this sort of encourages 
 me." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 Haggleton was listening very closely now. 
 
 Jenny stumbled on. She was not used to analyzing 
 her impressions and putting them into words. Yet 
 what she said, gropingly, was a revelation to the mil- 
 lionaire. 
 
 " You have made me see," the young woman was 
 saying, " that there are two Phillips the one Gentle 
 knows, and the one you know." 
 
 She looked up at the picture again. 
 
 " Yes," she added, with a contented smile, " that's 
 it. Two Phillips. You have waked up the one that 
 Gentle does not know, so why shouldn't I " 
 
 " Two Phillips ? What a strange fancy." 
 
 Haggleton spoke merely to make her go on. He
 
 "DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU CAN WIN HIM AWAY FROM THIS GIRL * 
 
 Page 161.
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 161 
 
 was amazed at her perspicacity and the simplicity 
 with which she had put its result into words. Jenny 
 did not heed him. She was still following the thought 
 to its personal application, the one that interested 
 her most. 
 
 " I tell you there are two Phillips," she insisted. 
 Again she smiled contentedly and with a dawning 
 assurance. Then she reached her conclusion: 
 
 " One Phillip loves this trained nurse ; what's the 
 matter with the other Phillip loving me ? " 
 
 She smiled up confidingly at this man from the 
 outer world, upon whom she had learned to rely im- 
 plicitly in so short a space of time. 
 
 Haggleton felt uncertain of his course for once. 
 Woman! Did one ever know? Business men were 
 the same the world over. Anyhow, one could guess 
 at what they would think and do. But a woman? 
 Well, well, he had been teaching Jenny many things, 
 but now she suddenly was teaching him. 
 
 And Phillip was his son ! Margaret Lawrence he 
 hardly knew as yet, but what he knew of her led 
 him to expect that she would oppose him. Jenny 
 had confessed her secret to him with frank simplicity. 
 Here was a new complication! Still another battle 
 to be fought over Phillip ! 
 
 He began to feel uneasy, and, to gain time, asked: 
 " Do you really think that you can win him away 
 from this girl ? " 
 
 The answer staggered him. Jenny turned her large, 
 dark eyes full upon him and asked tranquilly : 
 
 " Do you really think that you can win him away 
 from Gentle?"
 
 1 62 THE BATTLE 
 
 What did this young woman know? Not that he 
 was Phillip's father, of course. But the rest of it 
 she had gauged pretty accurately by intuition, no 
 doubt. And intuition had told her how to apply her 
 knowledge to her own case. 
 
 But Jenny was already off on another tack. She 
 began to pay her compliments to her hated rival: 
 
 " She makes me tired with her airs and she's not 
 strong for you, Mr. Jackson," she added viciously. 
 " When I met her, I saw that she didn't care for me 
 and she doesn't know anything about me. You do, 
 though I never told you." 
 
 " I have guessed a little, Jenny. I respect you all 
 the more for your grit in returning here." 
 
 " Do you? I'm glad of that. Well, this Miss Mar- 
 garet's not so much of a much, herself. It was her 
 brother that put me on the downslide." 
 
 "Her brother?" 
 
 " Yes, the brother of the girl Phillip is going to 
 marry this stuck-up nurse! I've a good mind to 
 tell Phillip." 
 
 " Her brother is not her fault." 
 
 " No, I suppose he's mine ! " Jenny's tone was 
 bitter. " But I am going to tell Phillip. I wonder 
 what he will say to that ? " 
 
 " Do you think that would be fair ? " 
 
 " All's fair in love." 
 
 Haggleton looked at the firmly closed mouth and 
 doubted his ability to persuade her. He took her 
 hand, however, led her to one of the couches, and 
 made her sit down beside him. 
 
 " You know I like you very much ? " he asked.
 
 ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE 163 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " And I admire you, Jenny, for your pluck and 
 your honesty. You are a good woman, notwithstand- 
 ing what is behind you a fine woman. Are you 
 going to do a mean thing and disappoint me ? " 
 
 " It is fair " 
 
 " It is not fair to her ; it is not fair to Phillip ; it 
 is not fair to yourself. It is mean, underhanded." 
 
 Jenny's eyes wavered. 
 
 " Is it? " she whispered. 
 
 " You know it is. You will lower yourself in 
 your own eyes and in the eyes of all of us. Don't 
 you desire to stand well in this girl's opinion, in 
 Phillip's, in your own, in Gentle's, in mine? What 
 would you win by it? Phillip's indignation nothing 
 more. It would be unworthy of you, as I know you 
 and like you." 
 
 Jenny sat silent for some time, tracing patterns on 
 the floor before her with the toe of her shoe. Then 
 she looked up with brave resolution in her grave 
 eyes. 
 
 " I won't tell him, I won't tell her," she said. " I 
 will play fair." 
 
 " I knew it, my dear ; I knew you would not." 
 
 " I do it only for your sake." 
 
 " You do it for your own sake, because you are 
 the fine woman I knew you were." 
 
 He bent forward and kissed her lightly on the 
 cheek. She gave him a glance full of pleased grati- 
 tude, and furtively wiped her eyes. Then she sprang 
 up. 
 
 " But I am going to fight for my other Phillip to
 
 164 THE BATTLE 
 
 the end," she declared defiantly, " just as you are 
 going to fight for yours." 
 
 " That's understood. Now, Jenny, something else. 
 How much money have you been earning ? Sometimes 
 four, sometimes five? Very well. When this bake- 
 shop scheme comes off, you'll get eight. We've bright- 
 ened up this room; we're going to brighten up your 
 life and your father's " 
 
 " There is only one thing that can brighten up my 
 life, Mr. Jackson, and father well, he has no hope 
 for the future. He only broods over the past." 
 
 " His past? Ah, yes, he failed in business? " 
 
 " He had a little oil business in Iowa. Nothing 
 big, like what he now imagines it was, but enough 
 to keep us all comfortably. But the Trust couldn't let 
 us go by. John J.'s wagons undersold us at our own 
 door. Now father is a helper in a cellar bakeshop." 
 
 " That is the law of business, Jenny. The sur- 
 vival of the fittest." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so. But it's hard to prove that 
 to those who don't fit." 
 
 She got up and moved toward her room. Phillip 
 might come soon now, and Mr. Jackson's departure 
 was only being delayed by their talk. She had, in- 
 deed, the satisfaction of seeing him pick up his hat 
 as she closed her door, but before he could reach 
 the hall Gentle entered after an impatient knock.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 
 
 THE old diver looked discontented, perturbed. 
 " Ah, how is Mr. Gentle," said Haggleton, put- 
 ting down his hat again, " and what brings him here? 
 Well, what's the trouble ? " 
 
 " Just so. I'll come right to the point, Mr. Mr. 
 Jackson " Gentle glanced around him cautiously 
 " I want to have it out with you before Phillip comes 
 in." 
 
 " I expect him later on to report on our bakeshop 
 organization." 
 
 " Ah ! And you ask what the trouble is ! There 
 you have it! We have nothing but bakeshops here, 
 nothing but schemes for making money. I wanted 
 you to study the problems of poverty with Phillip " 
 
 " Pardon me. That was not our arrangement. Un- 
 derstand, I am a poor man hustling for a living." 
 
 " A poor man ! It's a wonder no one has recog- 
 nized you yet ! " 
 
 " The newspapers say I am away on my yacht ; no- 
 body knows that I'm down here, nobody is looking 
 for me. If one of those smart reporters happened 
 to see me, he'd say : ' Hello ! Get on to the old baker 
 who looks like John J.' " 
 
 " But Phillip knows." 
 
 165
 
 i66 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Phillip will keep his mouth shut. I asked him 
 to, and he said he was interested in this experiment 
 and would do nothing to hinder it. v 
 
 " That's the trouble, Mr. Haggleton. He's too much 
 interested. What's the use of this experiment ? " 
 
 " The use of it is that it will help me to win my 
 son. And he is worth winning. The more I see of 
 him the better I like him. Besides, it has another 
 use, as an object lesson to all you kickers. A mighty 
 good lesson. Look at this room, and think what it 
 was." 
 
 Haggleton looked significantly around at the evi- 
 dence of his driving power. His eye stopped at the 
 two windows facing the East River, with their su- 
 perb view of Brooklyn Bridge. An idea suddenly 
 struck him. 
 
 " By the way," he asked, " what's the matter with 
 joining these two little windows into one large ob- 
 servation window? We shall have the finest view 
 in the city." 
 
 Gentle could not repress a smile. 
 
 "What about the landlord?" he asked. 
 
 Haggleton was silent for a moment. Then he said 
 with grim humor: 
 
 " The landlord never objects to improvements in 
 the property if the tenant pays for them. We'll pay 
 for that window. We can afford to. By to-morrow 
 we shall control an organization of East Side bake- 
 shops that's going to be very profitable. Wait till 
 you hear Phillip's report." 
 
 " Phillip is demoralized," grumbled Gentle. " I 
 hardly know him."
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 167 
 
 " You have never really known him, Mr. Gentle. 
 You are just getting acquainted with him. He's my 
 son" 
 
 " It's a temporary infatuation, nothing more. He is 
 fascinated by the idea that John J. Haggleton is doing 
 this extraordinary thing." 
 
 " Just so, Mr. Gentle. And he will be more fas- 
 cinated when he knows why John J. Haggleton un- 
 dertook to do it." 
 
 " And why do you do it ? " 
 
 "Don't you know?" 
 
 " It was a clever move." 
 
 " No. It has turned out to be a clever move. I 
 am gaining ground with the boy every day, but that's 
 not why I am doing it. I am sixty years old, Mr. 
 Gentle, and used to my comforts. Do you think I'd 
 stand all this because it was a clever move? No, sir. 
 I stayed down here on account of a few little words 
 that my son fired at me. Remember? Maybe you 
 didn't notice? He looked me straight in the eyes and 
 said : ' You've got to do your loving yourself.' By 
 God! that hit me hard. I've been up against some 
 tough problems in my life, and made some quick de- 
 cisions, but I never did anything that surprised me so 
 much as this. I'm not getting sentimental. I'm going 
 to fight you for all I'm worth, Mr. Gentle, but when 
 you've played your last card, and told my boy the 
 worst you can tell about me, then, anyhow, he's got 
 to know that his father came down here and lived 
 in a tenement " 
 
 He stopped a moment, then added, his voice husky 
 with deep feeling:
 
 168 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Because his father wanted to do his loving him- 
 self." 
 
 " But with all that," objected Gentle, " you would 
 influence him to be hard and selfish." 
 
 " I want him to be a fine business man." 
 
 " And I," rejoined Gentle slowly, " want him to be 
 a fine man." 
 
 " H'm ! So far as that goes, I don't expect my 
 son to be a business man and nothing else. I'm glad 
 to have him study these problems of poverty, and 
 solve them, if he can. All I ask is that you and he 
 be reasonable. Suppose we draw up a plan that will 
 satisfy all of us. Understand now, I will not give one 
 dollar for sloppy, sentimental nonsense, but I'll put 
 up one million, two millions, five millions, if we can 
 work out some sound scheme of public betterment." 
 
 " Five millions ? " gasped Gentle, hardly believing 
 his own ears. 
 
 " Yes, sir, five millions. And I should want the 
 work of carrying out such a scheme, the executive 
 work, to be in your hands. You are honest, and you 
 mean to do right. That's a whole lot in these days." 
 Then he added impressively : " It's a great chance for 
 you." 
 
 Gentle reflected. Yes, it was a great chance for 
 him, and what touched him far more a great chance 
 for the poor. What could he not do with so much 
 money? Even in his wildest dreams of social reform 
 he had not dared to think of such a sum with which 
 to carry them out. 
 
 His dreams of social betterment! Phillip knew 
 them all. He had discussed them with the lad since
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 169 
 
 he had left the teens behind him. They would work 
 together. But then A sudden thought struck Gen- 
 tle. He looked up and asked: 
 
 "Then Phillip would know his father?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " And his mother what about her ? " 
 
 Haggleton was ready for him. He never made a 
 proposition without having prepared it in all details, 
 having foreseen all objections. So now he answered 
 readily, watching Gentle's face the while: 
 
 " We will tell Phillip that there was trouble years 
 ago between his mother and me. I'll admit that I 
 was much in the wrong absorbed in business; too 
 keen about money. That ought to fix it." 
 
 " Oh, no, not with Phillip. It is too vague. He 
 must know exactly what the trouble was." 
 
 Haggleton made an impatient movement. 
 
 " Out with it ! " he exclaimed. " What you mean 
 is that Phillip must see that statement?" 
 
 " I mean that justice must be done to a noble wom- 
 an. He never knew her, he will learn to love you 
 and believe in you. He might in the end consider 
 that she must have been in the wrong, and come to 
 hate her. And if it's a question between hating his 
 mother and hating you " 
 
 " You'd rather have him hate me." 
 
 Haggleton was speaking with quick decision, as if 
 this phase of the problem were not new to him. He 
 continued with growing energy: 
 
 "What good will it do if he hates me? Will 
 it do you any good ? Will it do him any good ? Will 
 it do his dead mother any good ? "
 
 170 THE BATTLE 
 
 He rose excitedly and fired point-blank at his con- 
 fused opponent his clinching question: 
 
 " Is that why you got me to come down here ? Is 
 that why I am living in a tenement to have my son 
 hate me ? " 
 
 Gentle stammered, sparring for time to see his way 
 clear in his dilemma. But Haggleton was Haggleton 
 now, who never let up on his man after he had got 
 him where he wanted him. He pressed upon Gentle 
 his irrefutable argument with restrained vehemence: 
 
 " You talk about my wife and the wrong I did. I 
 can't atone to her, can I ? for she is dead ! If I atone 
 to anybody, I've got to pay to the living, have I not? 
 After all, that was what his mother wanted, to have 
 Phillip do good with my money. Now he'll do more 
 good than she ever dreamt of. I'll put aside what 
 did I say? Five millions? I'll put aside ten millions 
 for a great battle against poverty ! " 
 
 " Ten millions ! " 
 
 ".Ten millions. But not one dollar unless I get my 
 son." 
 
 Gentle was moved. How this master of money 
 must love his boy; how he must have longed for him 
 through the lonely years, arid of joy in spite of all 
 their golden harvests ! 
 
 " I am surprised," he began, " and touched to hear 
 you talk like that, but" he returned in perplexity 
 to the problem " there still remains your wife's state- 
 ment." 
 
 " You are bound by your promise to see her wish 
 carried out, are you not? " argued Haggleton. " Now, 
 if it is accomplished without the statement "
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 171 
 
 " I see ! You think that I ought to destroy it ? " 
 
 " Don't you ? " 
 
 Haggleton saw that he was gaining his point, as 
 always. He followed up the advantage already won 
 with still another argument. 
 
 " You have considered yourself and my dead wife 
 in the matter," he pointed out. " But what about 
 Phillip? Suppose he preferred not to see this state- 
 ment suppose he hesitated? You would advise 
 against it, would you not ? " 
 
 " In the circumstances I I think I would." 
 
 Haggleton held out his hand. 
 
 " Then we'll leave it to him," he concluded, " but 
 not until I say the word." 
 
 Gentle nodded assent. The practical man of affairs 
 had shown him how to carry out the dead woman's 
 wishes without unnecessary harm to the living. That 
 was, after all, what she would have chosen herself. 
 And the person most directly interested Phil himself 
 had been chosen arbiter. It seemed but just. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Haggleton, " here he comes." 
 
 Phillip entered with buoyant step, his eyes shining, 
 a smile of triumph on his lips. 
 
 " Good morning," he said in a vibrant voice. 
 
 " Well, did you succeed ? " asked Haggleton, watch- 
 ing Gentle out of the corner of his eye. 
 
 " Indeed, I did," exulted the young man. " I got 
 the kneading machine on credit, with a hundred dol- 
 lars paid down." 
 
 He took the papers out of his pocket and handed 
 them to the millionaire, who carefully examined them, 
 nodding approvingly.
 
 172 THE BATTLE 
 
 " That's a good contract," he commented. " Well, 
 that machine will do the work of six men." 
 
 He put the papers away neatly on one of the shelves 
 behind the muslin curtains, and continued in a brisk, 
 business tone: 
 
 " And how about the flour? " 
 
 " The Wisconsin mills will furnish it to the com- 
 bination at fifteen per cent off the jobbers' price." 
 
 Phillip was delighted with the complete success 
 of this, his first business venture. 
 
 " They will accept thirty-day notes from the differ- 
 ent bakers ? " 
 
 " Exactly. No trouble about it at all." 
 
 Haggleton turned to Gentle, who had been listening 
 with an air of discontent. 
 
 " You see," he pointed out, " we shall save on wages 
 and material. We'll do a bigger business because 
 we'll sell better bread and cheaper bread." Then 
 he turned to Phillip again: 
 
 '*-How many bakers have come into the combina- 
 tion ? " he asked. 
 
 " Six so far, but we can get more." 
 
 " Get more ? " echoed the millionaire. " Why, as I 
 said the other day, all the little bakers on the East Side 
 will soon be tumbling over themselves to get in." 
 
 " They've got to come in," began Phillip grimly, 
 " or " 
 
 " Or what? " 
 
 It was Gentle who spoke, and there was a world 
 of meaning in his voice. This was Phillip, the social 
 reformer, the friend of the poor? Indeed, the boy 
 had drifted far away from his teachings in these few
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 173 
 
 days under Haggleton's influence. He was but echo- 
 ing his words. 
 
 Gentle thought that he saw his opportunity of re- 
 claiming the youth, who had faltered in his answer. 
 So he repeated: 
 
 " They've got to come in or what ? " 
 
 Phillip looked at him, then his eyes wavered. He 
 saw the accusation in his old friend's face, but he 
 doggedly finished his sentence. 
 
 " They've got to come in, or go out of business." 
 
 " Phillip," said Gentle quietly and very gravely, 
 " Phillip, my boy, do you realize that you are building 
 up a little trust? That you will turn men out of 
 work?" 
 
 The young man looked uneasy. He shifted his 
 eyes from Gentle's face, hesitated, then answered, 
 turning instinctively to Haggleton : 
 
 " A few men will be thrown out of work. But we'll 
 give better bread and cheaper bread to the whole East 
 Side." 
 
 Haggleton immediately came to his assistance. 
 
 " Just so," he declared confidently. And he added : 
 " Incidentally, I will prove that a poor man like Mo- 
 ran can conquer these tenement-house conditions if 
 he has any gumption. That's what I started out to 
 do, and I am doing it." 
 
 Phillip looked at him attentively. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " you are doing it, but," and a note 
 of wonder came into his voice, " why are you doing 
 it?" 
 
 " You'll know that before long, Phillip," answered 
 the millionaire cheerily. " The point is now that in
 
 174 THE BATTLE 
 
 a month we shall have a prosperous business going 
 on here." 
 
 He looked around him, considered a moment, then 
 decided : 
 
 " We'd better take that empty flat across the hall 
 for sleeping rooms; we shall need this one for of- 
 fices." 
 
 " Yes," assented Phillip, " it looks as if we shall." 
 
 Haggleton, having proved to Gentle the strength 
 of the influence he had already acquired over Phillip, 
 now proceeded to increase it by drawing his attention 
 to some other results of his activity. 
 
 " In a little while," he asserted, " you'll see Joe 
 Caffrey at work in a clean shirt, with pool rooms cut 
 out, and Moran will stop kicking." 
 
 " I doubt that, Mr. Haggleton," said Gentle dryly. 
 
 " As long as a man has no money, he's a kicker about 
 the wrongs of the poor, Mr. Gentle. Give him some, 
 and he stops kicking. That's why socialists are poor." 
 
 " Some socialists are rich, none the less." 
 
 " Oh, yes," answered Haggleton, with immeasur- 
 able contempt " parlor socialists, but they never 
 earned the money themselves. And I notice that they 
 hang on to it, all right." 
 
 Phillip felt a pang of compunction. He came to the 
 assistance of his old friend. 
 
 " Still," he said, turning to Haggleton, " the main 
 point is that things in this country are not fair between 
 the rich and the poor." 
 
 Haggleton took him up. Here was another op- 
 portunity to be improved upon. 
 
 "Not fair?" he asked. "I'll tell you how fair
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 175 
 
 they are. There isn't a poor man in this country 
 that's any good who can't better himself and leave 
 his children comfortable. And if those children are 
 any good they can leave their children rich. Which 
 is more than you can say of any other country in 
 the world." 
 
 " But the big industries, the trusts what about 
 them ? " asked Gentle. 
 
 " They've built up the country, sir." 
 
 " At the expense of the people," persisted Gentle. 
 
 Haggleton snapped his fingers. 
 
 " They're in business to make money," he asserted. 
 
 "Oh, you admit that?" asked Phillip. 
 
 " Certainly, I admit it. It's true. It always has 
 been true ; it always will be true." 
 
 Haggleton, who had been sitting at the table, got 
 up and faced Phillip and Gentle, who were standing 
 behind it. The millionaire felt that the moment had 
 come for a decisive statement of the other side of the 
 case. He spoke sternly, striking the palm of his left 
 hand with the fingers of his right. 
 
 " Look here," he began. " You can't expect one 
 class to fight the battles of another class. Why should 
 they? Do you fight our battles? If you want us to 
 run our railroads and mines and factories in a cer- 
 tain way, it's up to you to make us do it. You've 
 got numbers and votes ; we've got money and organi- 
 zation. Well, there you are. It's a fight, class against 
 class. You want to get rid of your grievances ; we 
 want to keep our privileges. Now go ahead, make 
 laws, inspect our books, learn our secrets, put us in 
 jail, do something, anything. But if you can't do
 
 1 76 THE BATTLE 
 
 anything, keep still; take your medicine and don't 
 come whining to us to play your game. We will never 
 do it, never. We are too busy playing our own." 
 
 He glanced from Phillip to Gentle, fixing the latter 
 with a challenging stare. 
 
 The three men stood there, silent, pondering, but 
 before the discussion could be continued, Moran 
 stormed into the room. He was hot, disheveled, his 
 eyes glittered, and his speech was incoherent with 
 rage. 
 
 " Here, you, Jackson," he shouted, " I want to see 
 you. Do you think that you can grab the whole 
 bakeshop business of the East Side and throw hun- 
 dreds of men like me out of work? " 
 
 "Men like you?" asked Phillip. There was con- 
 tempt in his tone. Gentle again looked at him curi- 
 ously. 
 
 " Yes, men like me ! " raved Moran. " My boss 
 has joined your combination, and I've got notice to 
 quit. It's an outrage ! " 
 
 He turned upon Haggleton and continued, his voice 
 rising to a scream: 
 
 " And as for you, Jackson, you you " 
 
 " Hold on ! " commanded Phillip with sudden au- 
 thority. Gentle had laid a retaining hand on Moran's 
 arm. 
 
 " Let me talk to him," said Haggleton. Here was 
 a chance to prove what he had just been saying. 
 
 Moran contained himself with difficulty. 
 
 " See here, Moran," the millionaire began briskly, 
 in his most businesslike manner, " this combination 
 is a good thing."
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 177 
 
 " It's a damned monopoly ' 
 
 The baker's assistant started on another speech full 
 of abuse of economic conditions in general, working 
 around to the particular grievance of the moment. 
 
 " You watch him," said Haggleton, dryly, to Gentle. 
 " Now listen." Then he continued aloud : 
 
 " Look here, Moran, we'll make better bread and 
 cheaper bread for the whole East Side." 
 
 Moran, who had stopped for a moment, continued 
 his harangue in his loudest voice and his best agitator's 
 manner : 
 
 " Yes, and you'll ruin homes in every street ; you'll 
 starve little children; you'll break the hearts of 
 struggling mothers." 
 
 Better and better, thought Haggleton. The man 
 was working himself up to a climax of denunciatory 
 fury. The anticlimax he, himself, had already pre- 
 pared would be all the more telling. So he continued 
 persuasively : 
 
 " We are going to make a lot of money." 
 
 " Blood money ! " shrieked Moran. " Any man 
 who would touch a penny of it is a low hound ! " 
 
 " I am sorry you feel that way." Haggleton's voice 
 sounded disappointed. " I had picked you out as as- 
 sistant manager." 
 
 Gentle suddenly became very attentive. He saw 
 what was coming. 
 
 " Assistant manager ! " repeated Moran in a voice 
 that suddenly became very mild. 
 
 " With a salary of eighteen dollars a week to begin 
 with," added Haggleton. 
 
 " Eighteen to begin ! " Moran was staggered.
 
 178 THE BATTLE 
 
 " But, of course," the millionaire went on, regret- 
 fully, " I can't ask you now to take it, knowing the 
 way you feel. You would regard it as blood money." 
 
 Moran glanced at Phillip, at Gentle, at Haggleton. 
 
 " Yes of course," he stammered, " that is to say 
 perhaps come to think of it, I don't know as I 
 would " 
 
 " But consider," persisted the tempter, " you would 
 always be thinking of those struggling mothers and 
 starving children." 
 
 " Well, cheaper bread would be a blessing, and 
 as assistant manager I could make things easier for 
 them." 
 
 " Then you accept? " 
 
 " Yes, I accept. I have to." 
 
 "Very well, then. Go down to the Madison Street 
 bakery and help set up the electric kneading machine." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Moran turned with alacrity, touched his hat, and 
 went out. 
 
 "You see," commented Haggleton, "it's as easy as 
 that." 
 
 There was grim amusement in his eyes. 
 
 Gentle did not answer, but shook his head. He 
 was troubled in his mind. It occurred to him that, 
 perhaps, he might teach Haggleton an object lesson 
 in his turn, and regain his influence over Phillip, at 
 least to some extent. So he said: 
 
 " I forgot those tenement-house calls, my boy." 
 Turning to Haggleton, he added : " Perhaps you would 
 like to go with us ? " But the millionaire replied with 
 barely concealed impatience :
 
 HAGGLETON WINS A POINT 179 
 
 " There is no use in these tenement calls." 
 " Oh, yes, there is," protested Gentle. 
 Quietly, without letting either Phillip or Gentle 
 know it, Haggleton had continued his investigations 
 of this tenement-house problem himself and achieved 
 a great deal in a little time, thanks to his marvelous 
 organizing intelligence. His offer of ten millions for 
 the cause to Gentle had not been made on the spur of 
 the moment. Still, considering it wise not to leave 
 Phillip just then to the unopposed influence of Gentle, 
 he silently took up his hat and accompanied them upon 
 their mission.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 
 
 JENNY, who had been hidden in her little room 
 during this long interview, waiting, watchful for 
 an opportunity to see Phillip alone, perhaps to detain 
 him when the other two should leave, now entered the 
 larger apartment swiftly, and darted to the window. 
 
 Where were they going, these three? Eavesdrop- 
 ping was not one of her shortcomings. She had heard 
 nothing, she only knew that Moran had been there, 
 that he had stormed and raved in his most impas- 
 sioned revolutionary manner, and that the voice of 
 Jackson had magically calmed him. She had heard 
 him depart, and clump hastily through the hall and 
 down the stairs. Then the three left behind had re- 
 sumed their talk, which had continued to reach her 
 inattentive ear as a confused, indistinguishable mur- 
 mur. Then they, too, had left. 
 
 Where were they going? She looked out of the 
 window discreetly, for fear of being seen. Would 
 Joe carry out his promise? She had paid him for his 
 service, and in such cases he always kept his word. 
 It was one of the few virtues she had been able to 
 discern in him. 
 
 As she looked, she saw a boy run out of a door- 
 way, speak to Phillip and give him a note. She did 
 not stop for more, but turned back into the room. 
 
 1 80
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 181 
 
 She was all prepared for him. She had taken off 
 her dress and put on a soft wrapper of yellow and 
 black, with her daintiest, flimsiest things underneath 
 and just a touch of perfume. She had let down her 
 thick hair and left it hanging over her shoulders 
 in alluring disorder. Then she had opened a bottle 
 of gold-dust fluid and carefully applied little dabs of 
 it to her arms and shoulders, where it remained in 
 shining blotches. To do this she unloosed her wrap- 
 per and when she had finished she left it open at the 
 throat. She certainly looked her best thus; she was 
 undeniably a handsome woman. 
 
 Poor Jenny ! She built such high hopes upon this 
 primitive ruse of hers, this trap of her physical at- 
 tractions laid for the man whom she worshiped and 
 would have served so loyally and with a devotion 
 that asked so little in return. This was what life had 
 taught her ! The dregs through which she had waded 
 clung to her. She believed that through them she 
 could attain her high purpose. For her love for 
 Phillip was really high and true, compacted of the 
 noblest aspirations, the best of all of her. 
 
 She would not stoop to the ignoble use of her knowl- 
 edge of Margaret's relationship Mr. Jackson had 
 saved her from that baseness, but all was fair in 
 love, and she was beautiful. That weapon, given her, 
 she would employ! 
 
 She went into her bedroom, where she had already 
 put things in order. She wanted Phillip to find her 
 there when he arrived, and so it happened, for pres- 
 ently the door opened and she heard a man's step. 
 
 "Who's there?" she called.
 
 1 82 THE BATTLE 
 
 " It's I," replied Phillip, coming toward her. " Hel- 
 lo, are you here ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered, with a show of confusion, 
 " I er I was fixing up my room a little. I did 
 not expect you back." 
 
 She came forward in her room, walking rather 
 unsteadily. " I don't feel well," she said. " It is a 
 sort of dizziness, it isn't much, only " She put 
 her hand to her eyes and half leaned against the 
 wall. 
 
 " You're weak and faint," exclaimed Phillip in 
 alarm. " Here, you must lie down." He helped her 
 over to the couch and fixed the pillows for her. 
 
 " Has Joe Caffrey been here ? " asked Phillip. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " He wants to see me. He sent me a message." 
 
 Jenny sighed faintly. 
 
 " Have a little brandy ? " continued Phillip. 
 
 " No, I hate it." 
 
 " Want a blanket over you ? " 
 
 " No, I'm too hot already. Maybe I have fever." 
 She held out her hand. 
 
 " Your hand is warm," said Phillip, " but it seems 
 all right to me." 
 
 He drew up a chair and sat down at her bedside. 
 
 " I'm so unhappy, Phil," murmured Jenny. " What 
 can I do? Tell me, Phil. I'm so glad you happened 
 in. You're the only one I can turn to and oh, it's 
 awfully hard." 
 
 " I know Jenny, but " 
 
 " I've tried to do right, haven't I ? I've taken any 
 old kind of work that turned up, and God knows five
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 183 
 
 dollars a week isn't much for a girl who's lived as 
 I have. Why, five dollars a day wouldn't pay for the 
 flowers I used to get! Haven't I come down here 
 and lived in this rotten place and never kicked? 
 Haven't I done the cooking and cleaning and and 
 tried to be cheerful ? " 
 
 " Indeed you have, Jenny, you've been fine," said 
 Phillip earnestly. 
 
 " Sometimes I ask myself what's the use of it all ? 
 Where's the sense in my trying to be decent? Who 
 cares ? " 
 
 " We all care." 
 
 Jenny looked at him and smiled wistfully. " Do you 
 care, Phil? You know I did it all for you." 
 
 " You did it because it was right, Jenny," he said 
 gravely, but he felt vaguely uncomfortable under her 
 pleading eyes. 
 
 " Phil," she went on, " you don't know how hard 
 my work is. This gold-dust stuff seems to eat right 
 into me and I can't get it off. See here," and throwing 
 back her wrapper, she showed him the marks. 
 
 He studied her white neck with a confusion of 
 emotions. He pitied this girl and wished to help her, 
 but she was young and comely and was lying here 
 before him apparently unconscious that her body was 
 partly uncovered. And he was neither a doctor nor 
 a priest. 
 
 " How strangely you look at me, Phil," she whis- 
 pered, and drew the wrapper about her as if in em- 
 barrassment. But inwardly she rejoiced. 
 
 They were silent for a time and then Jenny sighed 
 again.
 
 1 84 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Phil, do you ever think of the old days before 
 I was married? You were fond of me then, weren't 
 you? You told me so and you said I was pretty. 
 Do you remember ? " 
 
 " You were pretty," he answered unsteadily, " and 
 and you are pretty." 
 
 How his pulses throbbed! 
 
 " Yes ? " she brightened, " and Phil, you kissed me 
 once. And you said I remember everything you 
 said." 
 
 "What did I say?" he faltered. 
 
 " You said my lips were the sweetest things you 
 ever tasted." 
 
 Hardly had she spoken the words when she re- 
 gretted them, for a sudden change in Phillip's face 
 told her she had gone too far. She had made him 
 think of other lips, of another girl and yes, his 
 mind was on Margaret now, and he rose in sudden 
 agitation. 
 
 " I must go, Jenny," he said, " I I can't wait." 
 
 " Not yet, Phil," she begged, and swiftly changing 
 the ground of her attack, she spoke of her life with 
 such humble sadness that Phillip, touched and reas- 
 sured, sat down again. It seemed, she said, as if 
 an evil star hung over her. Why should George have 
 been killed? If he had been spared her everything 
 would have been different. And if they hadn't taken 
 away her little baby and let it die, then still she would 
 have had something to live for. Her voice broke 
 as she spoke of her baby. And if that selfish woman 
 hadn't left her husband alone then perhaps, even 
 then she would have kept straight. But things had
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 185 
 
 been too hard for her, she hadn't had a fair chance 
 and Suddenly she turned to Phillip with her whole 
 soul in her eyes : " Tell me, Phil, do you think me a 
 wicked girl ? " 
 
 " No, Jenny, I I don't." 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " she cried. " You are so kind, 
 so wise. You understand how that that thing hap- 
 pened when I was a nurse? You see how a man 
 might be tempted, don't you, Phil, even a good man, 
 just by being near a woman?" 
 
 " Yes, I I see." 
 
 " Sit closer to me here. People get lonely, don't 
 they, Phil?" 
 
 Her eyes were burning on him. 
 
 " Ye es." 
 
 " And want to be loved, don't they ? " 
 
 " I I suppose so." 
 
 " And sometimes petted ? " 
 
 There was a quiver in her voice that moved him 
 as nothing ever had. He could not speak, he could 
 only look at her, at her swimming eyes and her red, 
 half-parted lips. She trembled with the love that 
 scars and sears but will have its way. There was no 
 more acting, no thought but this, that the man she 
 wanted was there at her bedside, bending over her, 
 swept with the fires of youth and strength. For a 
 moment she met his half-consenting eyes, and then 
 with swift passion caught him in her arms and drew 
 him down to her. He tried weakly to free himself, 
 but her soft hair brushed his cheek, her knees clung 
 against his, he breathed the perfume of her body, he 
 felt the quick beating of her heart.
 
 1 86 THE BATTLE 
 
 " I love you ! " she cried passionately. " Oh, how 
 I love you ! " 
 
 She kissed him full on the lips again and again in 
 complete surrender to her feeling and he returned 
 her kisses. 
 
 Then at this moment of peril, when everything was 
 forgotten except the one overwhelming fact that he 
 was a man and she a woman, when he was about to 
 strain her fiercely in his arms then suddenly some 
 power in him or outside of him cleared his brain, 
 drunk with desire, and in a flash of sober vision he 
 saw Margaret, his Margaret, looking at him with grave 
 reproof. He hesitated, he wavered, then, with sud- 
 den revulsion, broke away from her clinging, strain- 
 ing, inviting arms and thrust her violently back against 
 the pillows. 
 
 " What a dog I am ! " he exclaimed bitterly ; " what 
 a contemptible dog ! " 
 
 Jenny, frightened, disillusioned, humiliated, hurt, 
 rose from the bed and stood looking at him with 
 blanched lips. Instinctively she closed her wrapper. 
 
 Phillip, breathing heavily, was gazing with unsee- 
 ing eyes at the array of bottles on the girl's bureau. 
 One, standing apart, near the edge, as if it had been 
 but recently used, caught his attention. It was the 
 little flask of liquid gold. 
 
 The truth suddenly flashed upon him. She had 
 been playing a part, she had tricked him here to 
 to destroy him. 
 
 And now a wave of anger swept through him so 
 that his hands tightened hard on her shoulders. 
 
 " You little devil ! " he said hoarsely.
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 187 
 
 " Phil ! " she cried in fear. 
 
 He stood over her, his eyes black, his lips white 
 with anger. 
 
 " Let me see those stains," he ordered, and, as she 
 cowered before him drawing the wrapper tight about 
 her, he seized it roughly and tore it open, exposing 
 her neck and shoulders. Then he rubbed his fingers 
 over the stains. 
 
 " Ah, I thought so! You said it wouldn't come off. 
 It comes off quite easily. You were lying to me ! " 
 
 " No," she said weakly. 
 
 He took the bottle from the bureau and opened it. 
 
 " I say you were lying. It's the same stuff. You 
 brought it here; you put it on your shoulders; you 
 you " 
 
 He checked himself with an effort. 
 
 " Don't be angry," she pleaded. " I didn't mean any 
 harm." 
 
 "No harm!" he shouted. "My God! What do 
 you call harm? Because you hate the girl I love, be- 
 cause you have no decency, you get me here by tricks 
 and lies to ah, there's another thing. Joe Caffrey 
 never sent that note ! " 
 
 " He wrote it, Phil." 
 
 " You made him write it. Yes, you did. If he 
 wanted to see me he'd be here, wouldn't he? You 
 wanted to see me, to get me here alone. That's why 
 you put on these gewgaws. You made up your mind 
 in cold blood that you'd raise the devil with me 
 and " 
 
 Again he checked himself and stood there, terrible 
 in his anger. She tried to speak, she tried to plead
 
 188 THE BATTLE 
 
 with him, but the words died on her lips. She had 
 seen Phillip deeply stirred, but never like this. She 
 knew that he was capable of anything anything now 
 if she provoked him further. 
 
 There was a long silence, and then he spoke in a low 
 tone that quivered with the effort he had put upon 
 himself. 
 
 " Do you do you own up ? " 
 
 She dared not lie again. " Yes," she said faintly. 
 
 She followed him imploringly out into the living 
 room. 
 
 " Phil, one word." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I I did it because " 
 
 " You did it because you're a bad girl ; you're bad 
 all through." 
 
 Jenny visibly shrank under his words. Despair 
 mastered her, but it found expression in outward calm. 
 
 " I am bad all through ? " she said quietly. " All 
 right. I got you here by a trick ? That's true. And 
 I hate the girl you love. You bet I do ! " 
 
 She looked at him narrowly. 
 
 " But what are you ? " she suddenly flamed up. 
 " You are a loyal lover ; you are a preacher of reform ; 
 you are a lot of things, Phillip Ames, but you held me 
 in your arms and you kissed my mouth ! " 
 
 She paused a moment, then added : 
 
 " And you liked it ! You liked it ! " 
 
 There was triumph in her voice and accusation, the 
 scorn of the woman for the man who is weak and 
 places the blame on her. 
 
 Phillip sank into a chair, crushed, burying his face
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 189 
 
 in his hands. It was all true what she had said, every 
 word of it! He who had believed himself so strong, 
 had been proved weak as water. How could he ever 
 face Margaret again? Ah, well, that was all over. 
 He would plead for her forgiveness, but 
 
 Jenny seeing him thus, forgot herself, her defeat, 
 her loss, in the desire to console the beloved one. She 
 had pleaded for a brother's kiss in order to win a 
 lover's. It was a sister's feeling, pure, compassionate, 
 unselfish, that now impelled her. 
 
 She went to him, knelt beside him, placed her hands 
 on his shoulders and compassionately whispered his 
 name. 
 
 But again he repulsed her. He rose, went to the 
 window, opened it, and said, with hatred in his voice : 
 
 " Don't speak to me." 
 
 The tone, even more than the words, drove her to 
 a desperate determination. She had lost she had lost 
 his friendship, his compassion ; she had gained nothing 
 but his contempt, his hatred. All was over for her; 
 there was nothing left to live for. Why struggle, then, 
 with poverty; why deny herself everything? 
 
 " Do you mean that? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, I mean it." 
 
 Phillip's voice had all the concentrated bitterness of 
 the man who echoes the weak plea of the first man: 
 The woman tempted me. 
 
 " Then it's all off," Jenny said briskly. Her mind 
 was made up. 
 
 She went to her room, returned in a moment with 
 hat and cloak, put them on, went to the door, opened 
 it, turned, and said significantly :
 
 IQO THE BATTLE 
 
 " I am going. I won't trouble you any more. 
 Good-by." 
 
 Phillip did not answer. He merely stared at her, 
 not grasping the horrible meaning of her action and 
 her words. 
 
 Jenny waited a moment; she still had a lingering 
 hope. But Phillip neither moved nor spoke. So she 
 said her final farewell, pleadingly: 
 
 " I am sorry, Phil but I I loved you, and when a 
 girl as bad as I am loves a man it is hell ! " 
 
 The door closed behind her. 
 
 Phillip remained seated. Jenny was forgotten. He 
 was facing the problem of his weakness in the face of 
 temptation, and his feeling of having committed an 
 offense toward Margaret beyond forgiveness. 
 
 Thus Haggleton found him when he entered an hour 
 later. 
 
 " Still here ? " he asked. " I thought you would 
 rejoin us." 
 
 " I intended to, but but I have had an unpleasant 
 experience." 
 
 " With Jenny Moran." 
 
 " How do you know ? Yes, it was Jenny. I tried 
 to help her." 
 
 Haggleton looked at his son, then leaned over and 
 brushed some face powder off his sleeve. Philip 
 blushed. The older man's face did not move a muscle. 
 
 " I see," he said. Then, resolutely : " She is in love 
 with you ? " 
 
 " Love ! " answered Phillip with loathing. 
 
 " Hm ! " mused Haggleton, brushing some more
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 191 
 
 face powder off the lapel of Phillip's coat, saying 
 dryly : 
 
 " Next time I would advise you to help some older 
 and homelier female one who doesn't put on so much 
 powder." 
 
 " Next time ? What about this time ? " 
 
 Haggleton had already made a fairly accurate guess 
 at what had happened. Phillip felt unhappy, and also 
 felt it his duty to confess to Margaret and make her 
 unhappy. Then everybody concerned would be un- 
 happy, and morality would be vindicated. He sighed 
 a little even while he smiled to himself. He needed his 
 son, yes, but his son needed him even more. So he 
 proceeded to give the young man a little lesson in prac- 
 tical worldly wisdom. 
 
 " Nothing has happened, has there ? " he asked. 
 
 "Nothing? Oh, no. I only took her in my arms. 
 I kissed her. Nothing has happened, you say ! " Phil- 
 lip's voice was tense with bitter self-reproach. 
 
 " It is a little thing," said Haggleton, soothingly. 
 
 " Little ? " He turned almost savagely toward Hag- 
 gleton. " If I cannot control myself in little things, 
 how can I control myself in big things? Besides, it 
 isn't a little thing. I am engaged to a fine, pure girl. 
 I'm going to tell her I must tell her and she will 
 despise me." 
 
 Haggleton took his arm and slowly walked up and 
 down with him. 
 
 "Why tell her? "he asked. 
 
 " She has a right to know." 
 
 " She has a right to know anything serious, but this 
 isn't serious. You love her, don't you ? "
 
 192 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Love her ? I worship her ! Oh ! " 
 
 Phillip stood still, covering his eyes with his hands. 
 
 " You don't care for this other woman ? " persisted 
 Haggleton. 
 
 "No! No! No!" 
 
 " Then you are easy with your conscience. It would 
 be cowardly to tell her. You would simply transfer 
 the regret from your shoulders to hers. Don't you 
 see?" 
 
 Phillip pondered this a moment. 
 
 " It seems true," he replied. " Do you really think 
 that?" 
 
 " I know it. It would cause her needless pain. 
 There is so much needless pain in the world, don't 
 add to it. Repentance is best done in silence, when 
 open confession means suffering to others." 
 
 " By George, you are right ! " exclaimed Phillip. 
 His face lighted up. " I must not tell her." 
 
 He glanced with open admiration at his wise coun- 
 selor, and added : 
 
 " It's wonderful how you see the best thing to do." 
 In a burst of confidence he continued : 
 
 " I don't know why I speak of it, but I I feel a 
 sympathy for you, sir. I used to think you were 
 sort of inhuman, but you've been kind to me, and you 
 have taught me a lot." 
 
 " I take a great interest in you, my boy," said Hag- 
 gleton gently. 
 
 " Sometimes," Phillip went on, puzzling, " I have 
 thought that I have two natures, one from my mother, 
 the other " his face darkened " from my father." 
 
 " What about your father? "
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 193 
 
 Haggleton hung upon the answer with intense in- 
 terest. 
 
 " My father was not a good man, Mr. Haggleton. 
 He he pretty well broke my mother's heart, and any 
 man who could be unkind to such a woman she was 
 a saint on earth any man who could be cruel to her 
 was a brute and a scoundrel." 
 
 " How do you know that he was cruel to her ? " 
 
 " I know how she suffered. I know what I saw. 
 Many a time she has held me tight in her arms, and 
 once I don't suppose she thought I understood she 
 prayed God to forgive my father's sins, and to let 
 me make amends when I came to be a man." 
 
 " But she never said what your father did ? " 
 
 " I never asked. I just grew up with the idea that 
 my life was set apart for a special work. And it is 
 set apart. I have a trade for my living, but my real 
 work is to help the poor. That's what mother taught 
 me, and I am bound to do it only " 
 
 " Only ? " repeated Haggleton. 
 
 " Well, sometimes I feel another thing urging me 
 a hateful, infernal thing, urging me toward money and 
 and all that. I think that I would like to be rich, 
 and that is what worries me. Do you see what I 
 mean ? " Phillip's voice was anxious. 
 
 " Yes, I see," said Haggleton, outwardly calm, but in 
 his heart rejoicing over this admission, these words 
 from his son's own lips proving the bond of kinship. 
 
 " That is why this Jenny affair is so serious," the 
 young man went on. " It shows the weakness in me, 
 You can't understand because you are not weak." 
 
 Haggleton put his hand upon Phillip's shoulder. He
 
 194 THE BATTLE 
 
 was touched by this confidence, by this confession as 
 frank and intimate as if the boy knew already the tie 
 of blood between them. Ah, yes, he had made prog- 
 ress. The battle was almost won. But not quite. 
 Haggleton, seeing his opportunity to strengthen the 
 ultimate position in which the last, the decisive strug- 
 gle must be fought, grasped it with the determination 
 that was so salient a feature of his character. 
 
 " We are all weak, my boy," he said (and how sweet 
 it was to say those two words, "my boy"). "We 
 are all weak, and I will show you how weak I am. 
 Take this tenement business. It isn't entirely to study 
 the problem of poverty that I am here." 
 
 " No? " Phillip looked interested. 
 
 " No. There is a sad reason, an unpleasant reason. 
 I give you confidence for confidence, my boy. We 
 begin to understand each other. The fact is that years 
 ago I did something that I regret." 
 
 " Something wrong ? " 
 
 Phillip regretted the question the moment it had 
 passed his lips. It was ill-considered, impertinent, he 
 felt. But Haggleton quietly confessed. 
 
 " Yes, something wrong. And Gentle knows it." 
 
 "Gentle!" 
 
 " Yes. I am making amends for that wrong now." 
 
 Haggleton stopped, getting ready for his final argu- 
 ment. 
 
 " Do you think it would serve any purpose to expose 
 me, to place the burden of my sin upon other shoul- 
 ders on the shoulders of those who must succeed me ? 
 Will it not answer the demands of justice if I am al- 
 lowed to atone sincerely in silence, as it answers the
 
 THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM 195 
 
 purpose best for you to repent without telling Mar- 
 garet?" 
 
 " Certainly," said Phillip. " That sounds but just." 
 " Well, then, will you promise not to try to find out 
 what it is that I did in the past ? " 
 
 " I certainly won't. It is not for me to judge an- 
 other man." 
 
 " And if Gentle should try to tell you? " 
 
 " I'll refuse to listen. I won't let him tell me."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 
 
 MARGARET LAWRENCE, meanwhile, was 
 going her way, doing good. She found use 
 for every minute of her waking hours in that disease- 
 infected district with its horde of neglected children 
 and overworked mothers. Poverty pinched her, how- 
 ever, and she had been glad to take two " pay cases " 
 in succession. It followed that she had seen but little 
 of Phillip for some time, but his letters to her had 
 sufficed to make her vaguely uneasy. They breathed a 
 different spirit now ; there was in them the atmosphere 
 of material aspiration, of money-making, that seemed 
 unlike her Phillip of high ideals. 
 
 Phillip's letters were full, moreover, of admiring 
 praise of this mysterious Mr. Jackson, whom she had 
 seen for a few seconds that one morning in the Moran 
 home. She felt this strange man's growing influence 
 over her lover in every line that he sent her, and now 
 this combination of bakeshops seemed to be occupy- 
 ing all his time and all his thoughts. His letters were 
 still filled with protestations of love, but they were 
 promises also of comfort and idleness, of riches to 
 come, of all the things that she, in her youthful en- 
 thusiasm, scorned and despised. Yes, Phillip was 
 changing, and not for the better. She could not be 
 
 196
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 197 
 
 there to counteract Jackson's influence, and Mr. Gen- 
 tle well, Phillip wrote her again and again of the 
 growing divergence in their views of social better- 
 ment. 
 
 It was with happy anticipation, therefore, that she 
 left the patient whom she had successfully nursed 
 back to health, and returned to Mrs. Binney's board- 
 ing house. She would have time now to take her 
 worldly minded lover in hand, and to bring him back 
 to the path in which they had met and learned to care 
 for each other the path of loving service to the poor. 
 
 But fate willed it otherwise. On the doorstep of 
 Mrs. Binney's house she met Gentle, who looked more 
 serious than she had ever seen him before, and who 
 was unmistakably in a great hurry. At sight of her his 
 face cleared, however. 
 
 " Miss Lawrence," he said rapidly, " will you find 
 Phillip at once? There has been an accident in the 
 river Atkinson, one of the divers, is caught in a 
 wreck, and Phillip is needed. You will find him at 
 the Morans', talking bakeshop to Mr. Jackson, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 The old man smiled grimly. 
 
 Margaret ran all the way on her mission. A life 
 was in danger! Here was better work for her lover 
 than money-scheming and money-making! 
 
 As Gentle had said, she found Phillip in the Mo- 
 rans' rooms. He was in consultation with Mr. Jack- 
 son. As she entered, breathless, the elder man con- 
 siderately turned and looked out of the window, 
 giving them an opportunity for a loverlike greeting. 
 Happy as Margaret was to feel once more her lover's
 
 198 THE BATTLE 
 
 arms around her, she yielded to his embrace for only 
 a moment. 
 
 " Phillip," she said hastily, " there has been an acci- 
 dent in the river. Atkinson has been caught in a 
 wreck and they can't get him up. They just tele- 
 phoned Mr. Gentle. He has gone over and sends me 
 to tell you to come at once. The tug is waiting at the 
 foot of Twenty-third Street." 
 
 Phillip was alert at once. He grasped his hat and 
 started for the door, ejaculating: 
 
 " Atkinson caught ! Good God ! His hose must be 
 jammed under the timbers ! " 
 
 He paid no attention to either Margaret or Hag- 
 gleton, intent only on the work before him. 
 
 " Phil ! " shouted Margaret, running after him, 
 " you are not going into danger ? " 
 
 " Danger ? I am going to get Atkinson out of that 
 wreck." 
 
 " You are going down to him ? " wailed the woman. 
 
 " Of course." He added hastily : " Don't worry, 
 dear." 
 
 " Promise me you will be careful ? " 
 
 She was clinging to him. 
 
 He softly disengaged himself, kissed her, said " Yes, 
 yes ! " and ran off. 
 
 Haggleton and Margaret looked at each other curi- 
 ously. They had not met yet, and had seen each other 
 only once, for that brief moment, on the day of the 
 millionaire's arrival at the tenement, when the two 
 child boarders had been taken to the hospital. 
 
 Haggleton had carefully repressed the burning curi- 
 osity he felt concerning this girl who was to become
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 199 
 
 his daughter-in-law. Prudence, on his part, as an ap- 
 parent stranger, had bidden him not to force a meet- 
 ing. Now it had come about quite naturally. 
 
 He looked at Margaret, and approved of her ap- 
 pearance. She certainly was handsome, and the ex- 
 pression of her face winning. What was more, she 
 looked like a gentlewoman, every inch of her. As to 
 her opinions, well she was a settlement worker, and, 
 no doubt, held the theory that, while the poor should 
 help themselves somewhat, the rich should do most 
 of this for them. What attitude would she take when 
 she came to learn his true name, still more, his rela- 
 tionship to Phillip? 
 
 He stepped forward. 
 
 " My name is Jackson, Miss Lawrence. I am Mr. 
 Ames's partner." 
 
 " I've heard so much of you, Mr. Jackson." 
 
 Margaret stopped short and looked at him intently. 
 Then she backed away from him, a look of aversion 
 coming into her face. 
 
 " Jackson ! " she exclaimed. " No, your name is 
 Haggleton. You are John J. Haggleton! I know 
 you!" 
 
 " Suppose I am, Miss Lawrence, what of it?" 
 
 " You will know when I tell you my name." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 Haggleton searched in his memory. A light began 
 to dawn upon his features, which changed from doubt 
 to certainty, then to dismay. 
 
 "You are the daughter ?" he began. 
 
 " Yes, I am the daughter of William Lawrence, the 
 man you ruined and dishonored."
 
 200 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Business made it unavoidable, Miss Lawrence 
 Oh, why can women never understand such things ? " 
 
 " Business ! Yes, business as you practice it. Not 
 as honest men know it." 
 
 " Oh, now, that's going too far. I want to explain 
 to you." 
 
 Margaret shook her head. 
 
 " I won't listen to you," she said, trembling with 
 anger. 
 
 " You have strong prejudices, Miss Lawrence." 
 
 " Yes against disloyalty and dishonesty." 
 
 Haggleton reflected. This unforeseen ^complication 
 dismayed him. Was the ghost of his guilty past, 
 which he had made harmless through Phillip's promise 
 never to inquire regarding it, never to allow Gentle 
 to tell him of it, to be conjured up against him after 
 all by this young woman? Would it shipwreck all his 
 well-laid plans, so near fruition? A thought of man- 
 kind's unfaltering belief in retribution through the 
 ages shot through his brain, and paralyzed his think- 
 ing power. A second later he was again the resource- 
 ful Haggleton, the master of circumstances. 
 
 " Suppose I admit that I did your father a wrong," 
 he began cautiously. " And suppose also that I wish 
 to make amends ? " 
 
 " I don't believe it." 
 
 " Suppose I tear down this block, Lung Block I 
 own it, and never gave it a thought suppose I tear it 
 down and make a fine playground of it in memory of 
 your father and call it Lawrence Park? Would you 
 be disposed to believe me ? " 
 
 " Lawrence Park ! " Margaret's eyes shone with en-
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 201 
 
 thusiasm. The evil that could not be undone bearing 
 good fruit! At the price of her forgiveness! 
 
 She wavered. It seemed so fair an offer, so fine a 
 restitution, since not she but the poor would benefit 
 the poor whom she had always with her ! 
 
 " Lawrence Park where Lung Block used to stand," 
 she repeated softly to herself. But her grievance 
 welled up suddenly, and brought an unreasoning re- 
 sentment of the offer. 
 
 " You know how to tempt me," she said bitterly ; 
 " the very best way, but I could never be friends with 
 you never ! " 
 
 Haggleton changed his method suddenly. It was a 
 way he had of disconcerting his opponents and un- 
 settling their resolution. 
 
 " If it isn't friends," he said briefly, " then it is ene- 
 mies." 
 
 " Yes, enemies always ! I do not trust you, John J. 
 Haggleton." 
 
 Margaret looked around her at the changed room, 
 the result, she knew, of this man's energy and power 
 of management. 
 
 " Why are you living in a tenement under an as- 
 sumed name? " she asked suddenly. " You have some 
 selfish purpose ; you must have." 
 
 " No, my purpose is not selfish." 
 
 " Why do you want to make friends with me ? " 
 continued the girl, following up her vague suspicions. 
 " Why do you care what I do? What difference can 
 it make to you ? " 
 
 Again Haggleton changed his tactics. She was be- 
 wildered already ; he would confuse her more.
 
 202 THE BATTLE 
 
 " I'll tell you frankly," he answered. " I do not 
 want you to influence Phillip against me." 
 
 The effect was what Haggleton had foreseen. Mar- 
 garet's thoughts turned from her own grievance to a 
 new and nearer preoccupation. 
 
 " Influence Phillip against you ! " she wondered. 
 " What do you care for Phillip ?. Influence a poor 
 master diver against John J. Haggleton ? " 
 
 Her glance strayed to Phil's picture on the wall. 
 Something that she had never seen before in it struck 
 her. She looked again. What was it? Very slowly 
 the impression penetrated her mind. She suddenly 
 remembered what Gentle had told her concerning the 
 mystery of her lover's parentage. 
 
 She turned to Haggleton, scrutinized his features, 
 looked at the portrait again, then sank down in a 
 chair with a cry of horror. 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, " you are Phillip's father ! " 
 
 The millionaire was disconcerted. This was the 
 last thing he had expected. To gain time he asked a 
 question : 
 
 " What makes you think that ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't think, I feel, I know. You are his 
 father." 
 
 The meaning of it all rushed upon her and over- 
 whelmed her. 
 
 " Phil," she said, " whom I love, and whom I have 
 promised to marry! You are his father, and you 
 ruined my father ! Oh, it is horrible ! " 
 
 She sat overwhelmed, bewildered, feeling as if all 
 her happiness, all her beautiful plans and dreams were 
 in horrible chaos.
 
 'OH!" SUE EXCLAIMED, "YOU ABE PHILLIP'S FATHER." 
 
 Page 202.
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 203 
 
 Haggleton waited a few moments patiently. He 
 still held much in reserve. When he judged that the 
 proper moment had come Margaret had wiped her 
 eyes several times, and finally tucked away her hand- 
 kerchief he resumed the interview. 
 
 " Phillip knows nothing of this," he began. Mar- 
 garet rose. 
 
 " I will tell him," she said with decision. " I will 
 warn him. I will show him his danger." 
 
 "What danger?" 
 
 " You think that this boy has inherited tendencies 
 which you can appeal to if you have the time. Well, 
 you are not going to get the time! I'll appeal to 
 Phillip's better nature." 
 
 " Suppose you fail ? " 
 
 " I cannot fail I love him." 
 
 Haggleton motioned to her to sit down and then 
 took a chair opposite her. 
 
 " Let me tell you something, Miss Lawrence," he 
 said very quietly. " I have never breathed this to a 
 human being. I am telling you because you are a 
 woman a good woman. But, Miss Lawrence " he 
 raised his voice skillfully to increase her attention 
 " it is astonishing how much harm is done in this 
 world by good women." 
 
 He had succeeded. Margaret was interested. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she asked. 
 
 " I will show you what I mean right in my own life. 
 My life ! You think it has been all hard and cruel no 
 love in it at all. Just scheming for money, grabbing 
 everything in sight, and not caring who suffered. In 
 a way it is true, I admit it. But who made it true ? A
 
 204 THE BATTLE 
 
 woman. A splendid, high-principled woman like 
 you." 
 
 " You mean your wife ? " 
 
 " Yes, my wife." Haggleton was talking in a very 
 low voice, but very distinctly, letting each word drop 
 into the consciousness of his listener. " My wife," 
 he continued, " did not approve of certain things I did 
 in business, but instead of helping me, she left me. She 
 stole away my little boy, my son, and when she took 
 him, she took all the love out of my life. Four years 
 old he was when when she took him away. Such a 
 brave little fellow ! He had just had his curls cut off. 
 He used to walk along with me and swing his little 
 cane." 
 
 He paused as his voice began to falter, Margaret 
 watching him with covert astonishment at thfe betrayal 
 of feeling in a man whom she had held incapable of an 
 honest human emotion. Mastering himself, Haggle- 
 ton continued with quiet intensity : 
 
 " Love him ! Love him ! What plans I made for 
 that boy ! What hopes I had for him ! And when he 
 got sick " his voice choked again " well, never mind, 
 but I loved him ! He was my son, my only son ! " 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 " You think that I have all I want because I have 
 money. Money ! What is it ? A drug that makes us 
 forget what we haven't got. I tell you I want my son, 
 and you want to take him from me. I have waited for 
 him. I've got him, and I am going to keep him ! " 
 
 His voice had risen with his last words. Margaret 
 glanced at him with involuntary sympathy. She un- 
 derstood. But Haggleton had more to say.
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 205 
 
 " Do you believe in fair play ? " he asked. " Do 
 you know why I did not tell him that I am his 
 father?" 
 
 The girl waited for him to go on. 
 
 " I will tell you this, too. It is because Gentle said 
 that it wasn't fair to throw my millions in the scale 
 against his ideals." 
 
 " Gentle made you promise ? " 
 
 " Yes. And I did not want to buy a son I wanted 
 to win his respect and love." 
 
 At this moment Gentle entered quietly. He looked 
 inquiringly at these two seated there. Margaret, 
 catching the glance, got up. The spell of Haggleton 
 was broken. 
 
 " You have aroused Phillip's admiration by your 
 conduct of this bakeshop business," she said with de- 
 cision. " You have appealed to Gentle's love of fair 
 play by your promise, as you have appealed to me 
 through my father's memory. You can bend every- 
 one to your will, but you can't bend me ! " 
 
 " Wait, Margaret," Gentle admonished her. 
 
 " Gentle," said Haggleton briefly, " I have kept my 
 word. I have not told Phillip." 
 
 " You knew that he is Phillip's father ? " asked the 
 girl. 
 
 " Yes, Margaret. You believe me to be Phillip's 
 friend and yours ? " 
 
 " Yes, but " 
 
 " Don't tell Phillip, Margaret." 
 
 But " 
 
 "Don't tell Phillip," repeated the old diver, with 
 increasing seriousness. And he added, significantly:
 
 206 THE BATTLE 
 
 " At least not until I give the word." 
 
 Margaret looked from one man to the other un- 
 decided. Gentle, too, upon whom she had counted as 
 her ally against this enemy he, too, counseled her not 
 to put Phillip on his guard? He must have a good 
 reason he, her lover's best and truest friend. The 
 reflection carried weight; she decided to follow his 
 advice. 
 
 " I trust you, Mr. Gentle," she said, " and I prom- 
 ise. I will not tell Phillip. I will not even tell him 
 that I know who Mr. Jackson really is." 
 
 Then, turning full upon Haggleton, she straight- 
 ened her supple young body to its full height. Look- 
 ing him full in the eyes she threw down the gauntlet 
 between them: 
 
 " I have promised now, but the battle is not ended 
 yet." 
 
 " The battle ! " answered Haggleton. His spirits 
 rose. Now that this girl would fight fair he felt sure 
 again of ultimate victory. 
 
 " The battle ! " he said again. " I accept your chal- 
 lenge but you who love him, and whom he loves, re- 
 member that he is my son ! We are of one flesh he 
 and I and that's the elemental fact. You cannot keep 
 us apart ! " 
 
 He bowed to Margaret and left the room. 
 
 The girl at once turned to Gentle. The momentous 
 interview through which she had just passed was for- 
 gotten in her anxiety for her lover. 
 
 The old diver could give her good news. He had 
 been ordered not to go out with the tug, but to stay 
 on the dock, and had hurried home the moment the
 
 MARGARET AND HAGGLETON 207 
 
 news had been signaled across the water that all was 
 well, to tell Margaret and put an end to her suspense. 
 He had not found her there, and had gone to Moran's 
 place to look for her, stopping, however, long enough 
 on the way to telephone for particulars if any were yet 
 to be had. 
 
 He had heard enough to assure Margaret that 
 Phillip had made one of the bravest rescues on record, 
 a deed that would be celebrated for many a day where- 
 ever divers met together. 
 
 And Phillip was not hurt? Margaret asked the 
 question again and again. Happy in Gentle's reas- 
 surances that Phillip was safe and sound, and was 
 coming to see her that evening she hurried back to 
 her boarding house. 
 
 Gentle, left alone, looked around the room, so cheery 
 now in its neatness and order. Yet it felt unaccount- 
 ably empty. 
 
 " Jenny ! " he called, but no answer came. 
 
 He put on his hat and slowly went out into the 
 street.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE MASTER DIVER 
 
 PHILLIP had hastened to the scene of the acci- 
 dent. As they steamed along on the tug, one of 
 the men explained what had happened. A barge 
 loaded with copper ore had been run into by a ferry- 
 boat early that morning and sunk in fifty feet of water 
 off Eighteenth Street. 
 
 Atkinson had gone down to put chains under the 
 barge so they could get her up, and had found her 
 deep in the mud. He had to tunnel underneath 
 with compressed air to get the chains in place, and in 
 fixing the second chain something had gone wrong, 
 and when he signaled to come up and they tried to 
 lift him, they found that he was caught in the wreck 
 and they couldn't move him. Four times he had sig- 
 naled them to lift and four times they had tried and 
 failed. They couldn't budge him. 
 
 And now he had been down over three hours! He 
 must be getting weak ! 
 
 " Getting weak ! " shuddered Phillip. " In fifty feet 
 of water ! " He knew that two hours at such a depth 
 was a full day's work for the strongest diver, two 
 hours with the brain throbbing under an air pres- 
 sure of many tons! And Atkinson had been down 
 over three hours ! 
 
 ao8
 
 THE MASTER DIVER 209 
 
 " Come ! " he cried as they drew up to an ugly 
 wrecking scow anchored in mid-stream. " Come, get 
 the suit on me quick ! " 
 
 Leaping aboard, he threw off his hat and coat, un- 
 laced his shoes, slipped off his trousers and stood ready 
 for the rubber suit. 
 
 Three of the crew worked swiftly and silently dress- 
 ing him, for no diver can dress himself. They 
 squeezed him into the diving suit, a huge pair of rub- 
 ber boots coming up to the chin and fitted with rubber 
 sleeves clutching the wrists so tight that no water can 
 get in. They put the gasket over his shoulders and 
 made it fast with thumbscrews under a heavy copper 
 collar. They strapped over his rubber feet a pair of 
 thirty-pound iron shoes and then they led him to an 
 iron ladder reaching down from rail to water. 
 
 " Go into the cabin and fetch me my knife," he 
 said to one of the men. 
 
 Slowly he lifted his heavy feet over the side, and, 
 standing on the ladder, bent forward on the deck, face 
 down, as a man would lay his neck on the block. The 
 helpers made fast around his waist the hundred-pound 
 belt of lead that would presently sink him to the bot- 
 tom. And under his arms they fixed the life-line 
 noose. Then they brought the copper helmet with its 
 three goggle eyes and screwed it fast to the collar, 
 leaving the face glass out for a last word. 
 
 " Here's your knife," said the helper, holding out a 
 leathern sheath from which Phillip drew a wicked 
 weapon with a long, two-edged blade. He tried the 
 edges carefully on his thumb, then sheathed the knife 
 and fastened it to his suit.
 
 210 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Look sharp now," he ordered. " And when you 
 get the signal to lift, lift fast. Ready ! " 
 
 As he spoke two men began turning at a wheezing 
 air pump, while a third screwed on the face glass which 
 cuts off a diver from the outer world. A sweetish, 
 warmish breath entered the helmet as the pump fed 
 him air through the hose, and, moving down the lad- 
 der step by step, Phillip disappeared in the river. 
 Then, loosing his hold, he sank with a roar in his ears 
 and a flash of silver bubbles, sank with his total weight 
 of nearly four hundred pounds, and presently, thanks 
 to skillful handling of the life line, landed safe on the 
 deck of the sunken barge. 
 
 First he took his bearings, peering about in the dim 
 light, for fifty feet down in a muddy river a diver can 
 see only a few feet before him. Then he carefully 
 groped along the deck, searching for a rent in the 
 barge's side where the bow of the ferryboat had 
 crashed through. 
 
 Ah, here it was! No wonder she sank quickly! 
 Side and deck ripped open to her middle, with timbers 
 bent and splintered, standing out now in fantastic 
 shapes ! And how the tide hissed as it surged through 
 her! 
 
 Phillip waited until his eyes became accustomed to 
 the semidarkness, and presently, as his field of vision 
 widened, he made out a line of silver bubbles yonder, 
 steadily ascending. Atkinson must be there, down ort 
 the bottom, where he had been working when the acci- 
 dent occurred. 
 
 Phillip lowered himself over the side and sank until 
 his iron feet touched the river bed. Then carefully he
 
 THE MASTER DIVER 211 
 
 made his way toward Atkinson, and in a moment saw 
 what had happened. There was much soft mud in the 
 river here, and the barge, heavily laden, had sunk 
 deep in it. A risky job of tunneling, this a very risky 
 job! 
 
 Ah, there was Atkinson now, half sitting, half lying 
 against a mud bank ! But he did not move ! Perhaps 
 he was weary with his efforts; perhaps ah, his hand 
 stirred ; at least he was alive ! And, stepping forward, 
 Phillip took the hand in encouraging grasp as if to 
 say, " Old comrade, I'm here ! " A faint pressure was 
 returned, but Atkinson lay quite still. 
 
 With sinking heart Phillip studied the situation. 
 Here was Atkinson's life line running up free, but his 
 hose, the precious way of air and life, was caught un- 
 der a shattered timber of the barge, which must have 
 lurched over suddenly as Atkinson tunneled under it. 
 And in turning it had caught the rubber pipe before 
 the old diver could escape; and now, the end of the 
 timber, hooked over the hose, was imbedded in the 
 mud and the hose was held in a massive V that 
 pressed down upon it with the whole weight of the 
 barge and its load. Yet the hose itself was unin- 
 jured; the stream of bubbles showed that; Atkinson 
 was getting his air, but he was held fast at the bottom 
 of the river and there was no way of freeing him until 
 the barge could be lifted, which was a matter of hours, 
 alas, while Atkinson's hold on life was perhaps a mat- 
 ter of minutes. 
 
 As Phillip stood perplexed, he felt Atkinson's hand 
 drawing him closer, and, bending over, he heard this 
 message tapped on his copper helmet in the Morse
 
 212 THE BATTLE 
 
 alphabet, tapped faintly yet distinctly : " Wife chil- 
 dren love." Then came three letters that sounded 
 like " M W W /' as if his poor comrade had 
 tried to start another word and his strength had 
 failed. 
 
 God! The man was dying. There was not a mo- 
 ment to lose, no time to summon help, even if help 
 were available. 
 
 Again he pressed Atkinson's hand and found it cold, 
 with no response. He forced back the tight rubber 
 wristbands and felt for the pulse. There was a feeble 
 fluttering, a spark of life still. Ah! if he could only 
 give some stimulant, but between this man and all the 
 world was that copper helmet, at once a shield and a 
 barrier. And with no particular relevancy Phillip 
 thought of the tortures endured by a diver once 
 through the tickling of a June bug that had got inside 
 his helmet somehow, and had taken to violent gymnas- 
 tics over his face when they were down below. 
 
 What could he do? Surely he must save this 
 man! There must be some way of rescue! But 
 what way? 
 
 Then in a flash he recalled the theory that if a diver 
 in trouble like this were to cut his hose and instantly 
 press his thumb over the opening, he might live on the 
 air inside his suit until they could lift him to the sur- 
 face with the life line and get his helmet off. 
 
 He remembered hearing the question argued, and 
 doubt expressed whether a diver would be able to cut 
 his own hose, for the hose is tough and thick and joins 
 the helmet at the back, so that the diver himself might 
 have trouble in getting at it. But this case was differ-
 
 THE MASTER DIVER 213 
 
 ent; he could get at Atkinson's hose well enough; 
 there it was before him, and his arm was strong and 
 his knife sharp. 
 
 Phillip took the man's hand again. It lay quite limp 
 and cold in his. Then he rapped the danger signal on 
 Atkinson's helmet ; rapped sharply, but no answer 
 came though the stream of silver bubbles still rose 
 steadily from the helmet valve. He was breathing, but 
 unconscious. Then the master diver drew his knife, 
 and bracing himself firmly with Atkinson's hose held 
 tight between his knees, he made ready to cut. 
 
 But wait! Where were the life lines? He must be 
 quick with the signals to lift after the thing was done ! 
 Ah, there they were swaying beside him, two good 
 ropes reaching up through the yellow water, his own 
 and Atkinson's. Three quick jerks on each, and the 
 boys overhead would do the rest. 
 
 As Phillip gripped his knife again a feeling of re- 
 vulsion overcame him. After all, he could not do this 
 thing. That hose was a living thing, life and breath 
 to his comrade. To cut it was to bring Atkinson in- 
 stantly face to face with horrible death. And perhaps 
 there was some other way. 
 
 Perhaps if he waited then there came to him the 
 ghastly faces of divers he had seen taken from the 
 suits when there had been too much waiting, of divers 
 who had perished miserably in some such plight as 
 this. No, he must act and not delay, he must take the 
 responsibility as a father takes it sometimes at the bed- 
 side of a sick child. This was the right thing, the only 
 thing, and 
 
 With a strong, quick stroke he drew his blade across
 
 214 THE BATTLE 
 
 the hose, and in a single effort severed it. Then in- 
 stantly he stopped the hole with his left thumb, just 
 as he had planned, and gave three quick pulls on the 
 life lines, on Atkinson's first, then on his own ; and the 
 next second the two divers were rising to the surface, 
 rising swiftly with the strength of four pair of eager 
 arms above. 
 
 And all might have gone well had not the men who 
 were lifting Phillip pulled faster than the other two, so 
 that presently he found himself rising above Atkinson. 
 
 In an instant he realized what was happening and 
 the immediate danger if his hand should be torn away 
 from the severed hose. With his free hand he sig- 
 naled them to lift more slowly, but, in their excitement, 
 the helpers misunderstood the signal and lifted faster 
 than ever. 
 
 Phillip seized Atkinson's life line with his right 
 hand and clung to it desperately, while with his left 
 he held the hose. He could just reach down to it, and 
 no more. And presently, as the men above worked in 
 madder haste, he felt Atkinson's life line sagging 
 above him, and knew by the sudden strain that he was 
 holding the man's entire weight, suit and all, with his 
 unaided right hand. 
 
 He could not help with his left hand because he 
 dared not move it from the hose. He could not signal 
 the men, even if they would have understood him, for 
 both hands were occupied. And with all the love in 
 the world he could not support this load many seconds 
 it was beyond his strength, beyond the strength of 
 any man. 
 
 Now they must be halfway up perhaps twenty
 
 THE MASTER DIVER 215 
 
 feet below the surface he would hold on a little 
 longer and then and then came a great roaring in 
 his ears and blackness in his eyes, and the hose was 
 torn from his nerveless hand. He had failed in his 
 effort Atkinson must die, and in the agony of this 
 thought he lost consciousness. 
 
 The next thing Phillip knew he was lying on one 
 of the bunks in the little cabin of the wrecking scow 
 and the company's doctor was bending over him. He 
 opened his eyes weakly and tried to think. 
 
 " Don't talk," said the doctor, pressing a flask of 
 brandy to his lips. 
 
 Then it all came back to Phillip and he started up in 
 alarm. 
 
 " But Atkinson? " he cried. " Where's Atkinson? " 
 
 " Here I am, Phil," answered a cheery voice from 
 the bunk opposite, and, looking over, he saw the rug- 
 ged face of his saved comrade, who was lying there 
 with his head against a pillow and his flannel shirt 
 open at the throat. 
 
 " Ah ! " sighed the young man, and sank back in 
 contentment. 
 
 After all, it had not been such a bad affair. Atkin- 
 son had come out of his suit black in the face, but his 
 strong vitality and ten minutes of the doctor's manipu- 
 lation had brought him around. As for Phillip, he had 
 been overcome by nervous shock, and must take things 
 easy for several days. And presently the two rescued 
 ones started ashore in a little skiff, with one of the 
 boys at the oars.
 
 216 THE BATTLE 
 
 " We'll be on the job to-morrow," sang out Phillip 
 as they pulled away. 
 
 " Just the same, it was a mighty close call," re- 
 marked one of the air-pump men. And the treasurer 
 of the company cut off the piece of hose left on Atkin- 
 son's helmet and put it in the chamber of curiosities.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 
 
 HAGGLETON had shown his natural shrewd- 
 ness in choosing the bakeshop industry as the 
 field of his operations. There was, perhaps, no other 
 business which offered such wide possibilities for a 
 small capital; they were sure of quick results, for 
 everybody ate bread and paid cash for it. Further- 
 more, the whole process of bread-making occupied 
 only a few hours, the materials were of the simplest, 
 and there was a steady and immediate demand for the 
 product, so that what was manufactured one day was 
 sold the next. In other words, the capital involved 
 was turned over every twenty-four hours, which meant 
 steadily increasing profits up to the limit of competi- 
 tion. And all that they had against them were some 
 little bakeshops making poor bread under bad condi- 
 tions and paying high prices for materials, whereas 
 Haggleton now proposed to make good bread under 
 better conditions and pay moderate prices for mate- 
 rials. Also, as the bread from any one bakery was 
 used by hundreds of families, the consumers them- 
 selves became most effective advertisers, so that any 
 improvement in quality or reduction in price would be 
 known almost immediately throughout the whole tene- 
 ment region. These were almost ideal conditions for 
 the building up of a little trust. 
 
 217
 
 218 THE BATTLE 
 
 Haggleton's plans were far larger, of course. He 
 spoke of them tentatively to Phillip, adding cautiously : 
 
 " But don't talk about that yet. We've got to show 
 these fellows substantial profits before we can get them 
 in deeper. Besides," he added with a sharp glance, " it 
 won't be a case of profit for all of them." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 Haggleton lowered his voice. 
 
 " We have six bakers in the combination already. 
 Within a week we'll have ten. Within two weeks we'll 
 have all the bakers around here tumbling over them- 
 selves to get in. Why not, when they hear that those 
 inside get flour at ten per cent less than the others 
 have to pay, besides big profits from increased busi- 
 ness and cheaper production ? So," he smiled, " don't 
 you see? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " These outside bakers won't be able to stand against 
 us; we'll drive them out of the field and absorb their 
 business. Inside of six months half of the bakeshop 
 bosses down here will be working for the combina- 
 tion." 
 
 Phillip looked serious. 
 
 " Is that is that necessary ? " 
 
 " It's the law," said Haggleton grimly, " the law in 
 big things and little things, that the master mind rules." 
 
 All this had happened within so short a space of 
 time, and had kept Phillip so busy and interested that, 
 aside from occasional misgivings, he had not thought 
 seriously about what was happening, or caught its real 
 significance. It was true, his purpose of showing 
 Haggleton the phenomena of poverty had been put
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 219 
 
 aside for the moment, but he would presently return 
 to this, and meantime they were all benefiting by the 
 new enterprise; in fact it was a step toward giving 
 better food to the whole tenement population. Be- 
 sides, Haggleton was free to make his fight against 
 poverty in his own way and well, he had chosen a 
 way that was wise and profitable. 
 
 No doubt these arguments advanced by Phillip to 
 satisfy his own uneasiness would have been met by 
 other arguments had Gentle been there to counsel him, 
 but the old diver had been away a great deal with the 
 wrecking boats, so he knew but little of these latest 
 developments. And it was not until the third week 
 that Phillip was really brought face to face with facts 
 as they were. This came about through his call on 
 Margaret after her return to Mrs. Binney's boarding 
 house on the evening of the day of his daring rescue 
 of Atkinson. 
 
 Radiantly happy, proud of her hero, nevertheless the 
 girl had realized as she reflected on her talk with Hag- 
 gleton that she and Phillip were facing a crisis. The 
 millionaire had already partly won her lover from her. 
 
 A baker's assistant whose wife Margaret had nursed 
 through a protracted illness, a man, therefore, sorely in 
 need of continued employment, had called on her and 
 appealed to her for intercession. It was serious news 
 that he brought her, and it was presently made more 
 serious by Gentle, who was present. The news was 
 that the bakeshop combination had done the assistant 
 a cruel wrong by depriving him of his job in a bake- 
 shop on Madison Street. He was a victim of the 
 kneading machine, cast adrift and desperate, and,
 
 220 THE BATTLE 
 
 being ignorant of economics, he roundly cursed this 
 admirable improvement in bread-making that had 
 thrown him on the street. What was the use of try- 
 ing to do right when the world was against him ? Yes, 
 he had been drinking. Why not ? Wouldn't any man 
 drink if he had been cheated out of work like that? 
 
 Get another place? Where? He had been to three 
 other bakeshops where men had been discharged on 
 account of the same damned machine, and two of them 
 fathers of families. That was a nice business for 
 Phillip Ames to be in, wasn't it, and he calling himself 
 a friend of the poor? A fine friend of the poor he 
 was, taking work away from men who had never done 
 him any harm ! 
 
 So he railed on, and presently stumbled away, leav- 
 ing a message that Phillip could go straight to a hotter 
 place than any bakeshop. 
 
 Gentle looked troubled. He hesitated a moment, 
 then, as he met Margaret's brave, comprehending gaze, 
 he decided that she could help, and that now was the 
 moment to do it. So he told her exactly what was on 
 his mind. There was an old proneness in Phillip to 
 money love ; it was a fault that had come through his 
 father, who was well, she knew Mr. Haggleton, did 
 she not? Phillip's mother was the finest woman Gen- 
 tle had ever known, a true womanly woman. In some 
 ways Margaret reminded him of her, and he was sure 
 she could influence him wonderfully for good if she 
 understood this danger. Phillip was full of the noblest 
 ideals, his soul rebelled at the unfairness of things, he 
 was a fighter ; but, alas ! he could fight two ways, self- 
 ishly and unselfishly, and Gentle felt that this was a
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 221 
 
 critical time in his development. Had she not noticed 
 how absorbed he was in this bakeshop scheme? 
 
 " Yes, I have," replied Margaret, remembering 
 Phillip's letters. 
 
 " This is no little thing," pursued Gentle ; " I'm 
 afraid it's significant, like the awakening of an old 
 passion." 
 
 " It's all Mr. Haggleton's fault," declared Margaret. 
 
 " Mr. Haggleton is the occasion," Gentle replied 
 judiciously; " the cause is in the blood." 
 
 Then he warned her that, while they must make 
 every effort to guide Phillip right, they must do it tact- 
 fully, for he could be headstrong, if thwarted, and was 
 only to be led through his affections. 
 
 Margaret followed all this eagerly and tried to draw 
 from Gentle further facts about Phillip's mother. 
 
 " Did she realize that there was this other side to 
 him ? " she asked. 
 
 Gentle nodded thoughtfully. 
 
 " Oh, yes, she realized it, she realized it fully. And 
 sometimes it frightened her to think that with all her 
 love and care she could not free Phillip from this 
 this tendency to be like his father." 
 
 "How did she know he had it?" 
 
 " She knew he must have it, and we had evidences 
 of it now and then in little things. Even as a boy he 
 was wonderfully shrewd in making bargains with other 
 boys." 
 
 "Aren't you taking this too seriously? After all, 
 it's not a crime to have business ability. And haven't 
 we all a selfish side ? I know I have." 
 
 Gentle frowned and shook his head.
 
 222 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Everything depends on this fight," he said impres- 
 sively. " We had to have it and we may as well get 
 through with it. But, remember, this sudden bakeshop 
 interest is only a sign that the worldly, selfish Phillip 
 is struggling to assert himself. And I tell you, Miss 
 Lawrence " 
 
 " You were to call me Margaret," she smiled. 
 
 " I tell you, Margaret," he went on with increasing 
 earnestness, " there is so much at stake here, so much 
 that well, the selfish Phillip must not win, the other 
 Phillip, his mother's son, must win." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Margaret. 
 
 " And with your help he can win, but we mustn't 
 forget that the enemy is there to be reckoned with." 
 
 " You mean his father's son ? " 
 
 " Exactly," replied Gentle. 
 
 Thus prepared, Margaret intended to have a serious 
 talk with Phillip when he called that evening, but when 
 he came she was quite disarmed by his attitude of fond- 
 ness and submission. He did not argue nor defend 
 himself, but at once admitted that he had been too 
 much absorbed by this bakeshop affair; the thought 
 had come to him the night before as he lay rejoicing 
 in her precious promise, and resolving to live such a 
 life as she would approve. Besides, now that the 
 enterprise was fairly started, he could soon leave it 
 safely to " Mr. Jackson." As for the discharged 
 baker, he would see that he got his job again. And, 
 without fail, he would set apart certain hours every 
 day, say in the afternoon or evening, for their great 
 purpose ; that is, the further enlightenment of Haggle- 
 ton about the sufferings and miseries of the poor.
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 223 
 
 Margaret was delighted, and said to herself that, 
 after all, there would be no such trouble as Gentle had 
 foreseen. She bade him good night in a glow of deli- 
 cious, almost intoxicating happiness. 
 
 But Margaret did not yet understand the complexi- 
 ties of Phillip's nature, nor fully realize how subtle was 
 the influence which Haggleton had gained over him in 
 these days of close intimacy. Gentle, however, saw 
 it plainly, and resolved that from now on he would 
 be with Phillip constantly, even to the neglect of his 
 work, and oppose Haggleton's increasing power over 
 the boy's mind by his own love and watchfulness. It 
 should be a struggle between two fathers, as it were, 
 for the soul of this young man. 
 
 In furtherance of his good intentions Phillip had a 
 talk with Haggleton the next morning, Gentle being 
 present, and they made it clear to the millionaire that 
 his bakeshop activities ought not to take his attention 
 from the problems of poverty. After all, that was the 
 reason for his presence there and the justification for 
 this whole experiment. 
 
 Haggleton replied that the ordinary poor man was 
 supposed to have enough to do making a living with- 
 out studying sociology. To which Gentle objected 
 that Haggleton was not an ordinary poor man, and 
 Phillip added that, anyway, he could easily study 
 poverty for an hour or two every day and do his 
 bakeshop work besides. 
 
 The talk inevitably drifted, right then and there, into 
 a discussion of the surroundings in which laboring 
 men worked in general, and the helpers of the combine 
 in particular.
 
 224 THE BATTLE 
 
 " They ought to have shorter hours," declared 
 Phillip, " with time for exercise and pleasure, and 
 employers should be required by law to protect them 
 from injury and disease." 
 
 There was a ring of conviction in his voice, and 
 Gentle looked at Haggleton with a challenging smile. 
 The millionaire understood by this that hostilities were 
 declared between them and smiled back confidently. 
 After all, this was his son and, with a little wise guid- 
 ance, there was no danger of his accepting any foolish 
 sentimental standards. 
 
 " How can employers prevent injuries and dis- 
 ease ? " he asked. 
 
 " By creating healthful conditions of work and 
 by using proper safety appliances," answered Gentle. 
 " These appliances exist in all dangerous trades, but 
 employers refuse to put them in because they cost 
 money." 
 
 Haggleton thought a moment and then asked sharp- 
 ly : " Do you think there is any appliance that would 
 keep bakers from breathing flour dust ? " 
 
 " Why er " answered Gentle, taken aback " I 
 don't know." 
 
 "It isn't likely, is it? And yet, we've got to have 
 bread. Besides," he added, looking at Phillip, " sup- 
 pose there was such an appliance and it cost five hun- 
 dred dollars, could we afford it?" 
 
 " Not just now," said Phillip. 
 
 " Ah," laughed Haggleton, " that's the way with lots 
 of things we can't afford them just now. It's easy 
 to condemn big corporations, but, when you come down 
 to it, the people who do the condemning are built on
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 225 
 
 the same plan, they want to do fine things, but they 
 can't afford to just now." 
 
 No more was said at the moment, but that evening, 
 in the Moran home, Gentle produced scrapbooks con- 
 taining facts for Haggleton's further edification. Phil- 
 lip stood at the window all aglow with the joy of 
 strength and youth, thinking of Margaret and happy 
 in the knowledge that he had done her bidding that 
 day. Haggleton and Gentle watched him in jealous 
 admiration and girded themselves for the struggle. It 
 was for him that they were fighting. 
 
 " I'd like to show you some statements," began Gen- 
 tle, opening one of the scrapbooks, " that bear on what 
 we were speaking of this afternoon." 
 
 " You mean safety devices ? " asked Haggleton. 
 
 " Yes, and the accidents that happen for the want 
 of them. You're a great railroad magnate, one of 
 seven men who own or control most of the railroads 
 in the United States, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Not quite that," objected Haggleton. " I have 
 some influence in railroad matters, but " 
 
 " Yes, you have some influence," said Gentle dryly. 
 " Let it go at that. Do you know how many people 
 your railroads kill and injure every year? " 
 
 " No," answered Haggleton. 
 
 " I have the figures here," said Gentle, pointing to 
 the scrapbook. " And they show that in the year just 
 past you and your fellow-magnates killed over ten 
 thousand persons on the railroads of the United States. 
 You killed Jenny's husband that's the truth, Mr. 
 Haggleton. You may ask why I dwell on railroad 
 accidents when our problem is poverty ? Because there
 
 226 THE BATTLE 
 
 is a terrible relation between the two. You speak 
 contemptuously of those who have failed in life, you 
 like to think that the million or more in this city who 
 are in poverty are there by their own fault. I want 
 you to know that thousands of them are there because 
 you railway kings have failed to do your duty." 
 
 Haggleton made an angry gesture and started to 
 speak, but Gentle lifted his hand. 
 
 " Let me finish. In the past year over eighty thou- 
 sand persons were injured by railway accidents in the 
 United States, and most of them poor people! Four 
 fifths of them your own employees! Think of that! 
 Eighty thousand crippled and maimed in one of your 
 enterprises! There is part of your magnate handi- 
 work; you take these workingmen into your service, 
 these passengers into your trains, you accept their 
 toil or their money, and then, instead of protecting 
 them by safety appliances that are perfectly well known 
 and in constant use abroad, you torture them in crim- 
 inal wrecks, you burn them, you scald them, you tear 
 off their hands or feet, you crush their legs or arms, 
 you wrench their backs, you fracture their skulls; 
 you do this to little children, to loving mothers, to 
 young men ; you do it every day of the year to over 
 two hundred of your countrymen ! " 
 
 Then Gentle read extracts from various newspapers 
 charging American railroads with gross incompetence 
 and neglect, and demanding that directors and high 
 officials be put in jail for these offenses against hu- 
 man life. 
 
 "That's talk!" snapped Haggleton, "and it will 
 stay talk."
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 227 
 
 Gentle faced him with his old irritating smile. 
 
 " Do you consider America behind Europe in in- 
 telligence? Or behind Europe in wealth or resource- 
 fulness?" 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Then why is it that in a given number of railway 
 employees, America kills nearly three times as many 
 as England, and injures five times as many?" 
 
 " America is a bigger country, with ten miles of 
 railroad where England has one mile." 
 
 Gentle shook his head. 
 
 " I made allowances for that I said we killed more 
 in proportion." 
 
 " Our people are in a hurry ; they insist on going 
 fast, and that increases the danger." 
 
 " Pardon me," replied Gentle, " the fastest trains 
 in the world are in Europe. But it's true our people 
 are in a hurry. If they were not they would take 
 time to think about these things, and when they found 
 that we are twenty years behind England and Ger- 
 many and France in safety appliances, for we are, 
 and when they realized that this is true, simply because 
 you men in control refuse to spend the money required 
 to pay for these appliances if our people realized 
 all that, they would possibly put the blame where it 
 belongs." 
 
 " You talk like a child," retorted Haggleton ; " you 
 know nothing about conditions." 
 
 "No? I know this, that for years you magnates 
 fought against air brakes and automatic couplers, al- 
 though you knew they would save thousands of lives ; 
 now you're fighting the system of block signals that
 
 228 THE BATTLE 
 
 is used everywhere in England, and that would save 
 thousands of lives more." 
 
 " We have block signals on some railroads," in- 
 sisted Haggleton. 
 
 " On very few, and where you have them you don't 
 use them half the time. Your own engineers have 
 admitted that when forced to testify about accidents." 
 
 "If we had to run freight trains under strict block 
 signals we'd never get our business done," snorted the 
 millionaire. " Think of the freight piling up all over 
 this country, millions and millions of dollars' worth, 
 far beyond what the roads can handle and much of 
 it perishable. We've promised to move it, and we've 
 got to move it, haven't we?" 
 
 " No, sir," flashed Phillip, " not if it means destroy- 
 ing lives." 
 
 " Besides," resumed Gentle, " it's not only in rail- 
 roading that you slaughter people, it's the same in 
 mining and building and manufacturing. Here's an 
 article," he turned to another page, " that estimates 
 at over half a million a year our casualties in various 
 industries largely controlled by your trusts. Half a 
 million killed and injured every year and the greater 
 part needlessly! How? By dangerous machinery 
 in your factories that might be protected, by wheels 
 and saws and flying belts that might be covered, by 
 poisonous fumes and deadly dust that might be guarded 
 against; by explosions in your mines that might be 
 avoided, by falls, by fires, by insidious disease, by a 
 hundred perils that beset your toilers, all of which 
 might be lessened or removed, but for one thing." 
 
 " What's that? " asked Haggleton.
 
 HAGGLETON'S BAKERY TRUST 229 
 
 Gentle seemed not to hear ; his kind, thoughtful eyes 
 were fixed on Phillip as if he were speaking to the 
 boy's soul. 
 
 " Half a million killed and injured every year! " he 
 went on sadly. " Nine times the total loss in the battle 
 of Waterloo! Nearly all of them workingmen in 
 the prime of life, wage-earners whose injury means 
 distress or ruin to a family ! Think of the poor wives ! 
 The helpless children ! More recruits for poverty ! 
 More tenement misery! More wrecks! And the 
 greater part of this immense harm might be averted 
 but for one thing." 
 
 " Yes? " said Phillip eagerly. " What is that? " 
 
 Gentle looked steadily at Haggleton. 
 
 " You know what I mean ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Then, slowly and impressively, the old diver spoke. 
 
 " I am not exaggerating, I have studied this ques- 
 tion. I have lived it, and I tell you, sir, you are de- 
 fending a bad cause. You know that three fourths of 
 these accidents might be avoided and all this wretched- 
 ness and pain be spared us, and this enormous waste of 
 human energy prevented if you great captains of in- 
 dustry had not made up your minds that it's cheaper 
 to kill men than to protect them."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 
 
 THEY talked on for hours. And now Haggle- 
 ton, angered and at bay, took refuge in brutal 
 truth and admitted that kings of American finance 
 were very much like other Americans in this, that they 
 thought first and last of their own interests. 
 
 Gentle was delighted with the result of this talk. 
 He had forced Haggleton to throw aside all pretense 
 that very rich men like himself were genuinely inter- 
 ested in the good of the people, and to admit that they 
 were, as a class, striving selfishly for their own ad- 
 vantage, regardless of wretched and downtrodden mil- 
 lions. It was true, as Haggleton had pointed out in 
 reply to Phillip's look of reproach, that rich men, once 
 they had accumulated their fortunes, were glad to 
 distribute part of them, often a large part, in generous 
 works, colleges, libraries, and hospitals, but they did 
 this of their own free will, and would tolerate no in- 
 terference with their methods of making these for- 
 tunes. 
 
 To which Phillip had replied scornfully : " We re- 
 fuse to be impressed, sir, by any such acts of partial 
 restitution. The question is, how you got the millions 
 that you give back so grandly." 
 
 This was the real Phillip speaking, and Gentle felt 
 230
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 231 
 
 that already he had done much to destroy Haggleton's 
 influence over the boy ; he had torn away the hypo- 
 critical mask of benevolence worn by many million- 
 aires and had shown this millionaire to his son as a 
 hateful monster, whose chief purpose in life was to 
 gratify an insatiable greed for wealth and power. Now 
 he must go farther and influence Phillip to some de- 
 cisive step that would put him back once for all on 
 the solid ground of his nobler aspirations. And the 
 opportunity to do this came presently through develop- 
 ments in the bakeshop enterprise. 
 
 Things were going well with the combination, two 
 new bakers had been taken in, business was steadily 
 increasing and, in view of substantial profits, they were 
 already thinking of getting a second kneading ma- 
 chine and widening their field of operations when an 
 interesting proposition was made by a baker in For- 
 syth Street. This enterprising gentleman, seeing the 
 rapid advance of the little trust, and realizing that his 
 own trade was threatened, now proposed to join them 
 with bakers enough from his neighborhood (about a 
 dozen), and capital enough, so that the combination, 
 thus strengthened, could immediately set up two more 
 kneading machines and, by perfecting its methods, bid 
 successfully for the whole bakeshop business of the 
 lower East Side. Haggleton was in favor of this, 
 but Gentle saw a chance here to raise an important 
 issue of right and wrong in Phillip's mind. 
 
 So without delay the old diver called upon Margaret 
 and laid the facts before her. A dozen new bakeshops 
 in the combination would mean many men thrown out 
 of work and their families left in distress. This was
 
 232 THE BATTLE 
 
 a bad thing in itself and would surely have a bad 
 effect upon Phillip; it would harden him. Margaret 
 quite agreed with Gentle and listened with sympathy 
 as he told her various stories of distress already caused 
 by Haggleton's enterprise. 
 
 Margaret promised that all her influence with Phillip 
 should be used to make him oppose the new plan, and 
 when he called that evening she made so eloquent an 
 appeal for mothers and little children who would suf- 
 fer, that Phillip was genuinely moved, and assured 
 her the Forsyth Street proposition would be at once 
 rejected. Also that, of all gloriously beautiful and 
 fascinating women now upon the earth, she certainly 
 was the most fascinating and the most beautiful, while 
 he was the most unworthy, though the gratefulest, of 
 lovers. 
 
 In spite of this good beginning, it was not fated that 
 Margaret and Gentle should gain so easy a victory 
 over Haggleton. When the millionaire heard of Phil- 
 lip's decision and the reason for it, he promptly pointed 
 out that, if they rejected this offer, the Forsyth Street 
 baker would probably go ahead and form an opposi- 
 tion enterprise, which would not only throw men out 
 of employment, but would injure their own combina- 
 tion. In other words, they would lose a substantial 
 advantage without helping anything. 
 
 Phillip listened uneasily and was forced to admit 
 the soundness of this opinion, but he had given his 
 promise to Margaret and could not retract it without 
 her consent. So he asked for time to think the matter 
 over, and puzzled for hours trying to find some way 
 of satisfying his business sense without displeasing
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 233 
 
 Margaret. And, having failed to find such a way, 
 he had about decided to please her anyhow and let the 
 combination suffer, when an unfortunate discussion 
 between Gentle and Haggleton brought him suddenly 
 to a different state of mind. 
 
 Gentle was so pleased with the progress of things 
 that he could not refrain from pushing his advantage, 
 and that evening he turned the talk upon a subject 
 where he felt himself particularly strong and Haggle- 
 ton indefensibly weak; that is, the unfair division of 
 the products of toil. What right had an employer, he 
 asked, to keep a woman sewing carpets all day and 
 then take half of what she earned ? Suppose the wom- 
 an did the work at a private house, as often hap- 
 pened. Then her employer charged the owner of the 
 carpets say three dollars a day for the woman's serv- 
 ices, and gave her a dollar and a half. That was not 
 fair. The employer's part in this effort was too small 
 to justify him in keeping so much of her earnings. It 
 was the woman who did the work and breathed carpet 
 dust and took chances of infection; the employer 
 merely secured her the job and furnished needle and 
 thread. Seventy-five cents of the three dollars was 
 certainly enough for him, and, if he took a dollar and 
 a half, it was because the woman was helpless, possibly 
 hungry, and because there were hundreds of other 
 women who would gladly take her place for a dollar 
 and a half or less. In other words, he was strong 
 and she was weak, and he took what was rightfully 
 hers because he was able to do it. 
 
 Gentle contended that this was precisely the situa- 
 tion between capital and labor all over the country,
 
 234 THE BATTLE 
 
 the capitalist taking about half of what the laborer 
 earned, whereas a fair division, each taking what was 
 right, would leave the rich quite rich enough, would 
 increase the savings of the poor by hundreds of mil- 
 lions a year, and practically do away with poverty. 
 
 Was it not a monstrous injustice, he went on, that 
 a few hundred New Yorkers should every year draw 
 from vast unearned fortunes an income aggregating 
 more than the total yearly earnings of a million fellow 
 citizens born in poverty? For it was literally true, 
 he declared, that the whole body of poorest tene- 
 ment dwellers on Manhattan, all who were herded in 
 the vast human hives that stretched for miles along 
 the rivers, all those miserable ones who toiled cease- 
 lessly summer and winter, every day and many nights, 
 could scarcely, by their united efforts, earn as much 
 as was dropped into the laps of some scores of idlers 
 whose palaces rose scornfully on Fifth Avenue. 
 
 If Gentle had stopped here all might have been well, 
 for Phillip agreed with him thoroughly so far, but, in 
 the elation of triumph, he ventured upon socialistic 
 ground where, as Haggleton divined by a flash of in- 
 tuition, the young man could not follow him. Indeed, 
 it had long been a source of regret to the old diver 
 that Phillip would not take very seriously his dreams 
 of a beautiful industrial republic, soon to be realized, 
 according to him. And this was Haggleton's advan- 
 tage, as he immediately understood, for Gentle would 
 not repudiate his economic faith, even at the risk of 
 losing credit with Phillip. 
 
 So presently the tables were turned, and Gentle 
 found himself under a fire of searching questions by
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 235 
 
 Haggleton. Did he believe, for instance, that the pres- 
 ent division of wealth which seemed to him so iniqui- 
 tous would one day be replaced by a fairer division? 
 Undoubtedly. How would the new division be accom- 
 plished? By the will of the people. Yes, but how? 
 Take the railroads, who would own them? The peo- 
 ple. The people would take the railroads ? Yes. And 
 pay for them ? They had paid for them already. How 
 was that? They built them, they forged the steel, 
 they hewed the timbers, they did the work. H'm! 
 Then the eleven billions or so that the railroads were 
 valued at would never be paid to the present owners? 
 Never. And the present owners would get nothing for 
 them? Gentle replied that they would have the same 
 share in the common possessions of the State that all 
 other citizens would have. And nothing more ? Noth- 
 ing more! 
 
 Haggleton glanced at Phillip and saw that he was 
 frowning. 
 
 " Will it be the same with the land ? " pursued the 
 old man. " Will you socialists simply take it and 
 make no compensation to present holders ? " 
 
 "Why discuss this?" objected Gentle. 
 
 "Why not discuss it?" replied Haggleton sharply. 
 " You've had your say about our scheme of robbery, 
 why shouldn't I have a word about yours ? Of course, 
 if you're ashamed of it " 
 
 " I'm not ashamed of it," declared Gentle. 
 
 Haggleton smiled. 
 
 " Good ! Then how about the land ? You'll take it, 
 won't you, in your socialist State ? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 236 THE BATTLE 
 
 "And pay for it?" 
 
 " I tell you we have paid for it over and over again." 
 
 " I know it, but will you pay for it in any other 
 way?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " And the great industries ? " 
 
 " They will be of no use to you. Conditions will be 
 so bad you will beg us to take them." 
 
 "For nothing?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And if, by any chance, we don't beg you to take 
 them then you'll take them anyway ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 As he put these questions Haggleton watched Phillip 
 and saw that he was ill at ease, not wishing to seem 
 disloyal to Gentle, yet far from agreeing to this plan 
 of wholesale appropriation. 
 
 " Do you call that fair ? " asked the millionaire, 
 turning abruptly to Phillip. 
 
 " No," said the latter, " I don't." 
 
 A little later Phillip looked at his watch and said 
 he was going out. He had an engagement with Mar- 
 garet, and on his way to the boarding house he turned 
 over in his mind what he should say to her. It had 
 suddenly become clear to him that he could not trust 
 Gentle's judgment beyond a certain point; also that 
 Margaret's position about the bakeshops had been too 
 strongly taken for it to have been original with her. 
 Gentle must have influenced her to this rather senti- 
 mental attitude, and as to his promise, well, it was his 
 duty now to take a calm view of the whole matter.
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 237 
 
 Margaret would surely be reasonable when she un- 
 derstood things, and he called to mind with approval 
 the points that Haggleton had made against their 
 well-meant, but probably foolish decision. Evidently 
 a successful business had to rest on something more 
 solid than kind intentions. 
 
 Margaret greeted her lover with happy animation 
 and inquired eagerly if the matter had been arranged. 
 
 " Not yet," replied Phillip, and the gravity of his 
 manner surprised her. " I wouldn't take definite ac- 
 tion without consulting you." 
 
 " But you have consulted me," she said ; " we talked 
 it all over last evening and I thought it was settled." 
 
 Their eyes met in a look that warned each one of 
 an approaching crisis. 
 
 " Tell me, did Gentle talk to you about those bake- 
 shops?" asked Phillip. 
 
 " Why er " 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 " Yes," answered Margaret, " but how strange you 
 are!" 
 
 Phillip brightened as his eyes rested on her. She 
 had put on her prettiest dress and arranged her hair 
 in his particular honor, and now, with this shadow of 
 half perplexity on her lovely face, she was deliciously 
 charming. 
 
 " Suppose we sit over here," he said, " and you show 
 me what a sweet wise girl you can be." 
 
 He led her to the queer old lounge with its red-rose 
 pattern and there they faced each other, half smiling, 
 half serious. 
 
 For a little while it was the old wonderful story
 
 238 THE BATTLE 
 
 again with bakeshop worries forgotten and this queer, 
 dingy sitting room changed into a beautiful and hal- 
 lowed place, since it witnessed the awakening in these 
 two of the eternal joys of youth and passion. 
 
 But presently the difference of opinion that had 
 sprung up between them insisted upon obtruding 
 itself. 
 
 " Why were you so serious when you came in ? " 
 Margaret asked, and straightway Phillip became seri- 
 ous once more. 
 
 " We have made a mistake, dear, in one thing," he 
 said, " and I I know you'll be sensible about it." 
 
 She looked at him anxiously. 
 
 " You mean about what we decided last night ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You're not going to accept that man's offer ? " 
 
 " Listen, Margaret," he reasoned ; " if we don't join 
 with that man he will form a combination against us. 
 That is certain. So the same number of bakers will be 
 discharged either way and, if we force him to oppose 
 us, we shall suffer serious loss in our business. Do 
 you see?" 
 
 Margaret did not see. She was surprised and disap- 
 pointed. She had counted on Phillip's influence against 
 this cruel combination and now he was thinking only 
 of the money. Really, it was too bad ! 
 
 " But, Margaret," he insisted, " we must have 
 money, and, surely, you want me to think about the 
 future?" 
 
 " Not if it means harming poor people." 
 
 Phillip frowned. 
 
 " I tell you the same harm will be done, anyway.
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 239 
 
 And the men discharged will soon find other work. 
 Besides, think of the good we are doing. That far 
 outweighs any temporary inconvenience to a few 
 families." 
 
 " What good are you doing? " 
 
 " What good ? Why, we're working a regular revo- 
 lution in bread-making. You may say what you please 
 about Mr. Jackson, but " 
 
 " I hate him ! " interrupted Margaret. 
 
 " Anyway, he has changed these bakeshops so you 
 would scarcely know them. He insists on absolute 
 cleanliness floors and walls must be scrubbed every 
 day, windows must be kept open for proper ventilation, 
 defective plumbing must be repaired, no sick man may 
 be employed, and any baker found spitting on the 
 floor it's not very nice to talk about, but they used 
 to do it all the time any such man is fined, and for 
 a second offense is discharged." 
 
 " I suppose that's a good thing," she admitted. 
 
 "A good thing? It may save hundreds of lives, 
 besides setting an example for the whole East Side." 
 
 Margaret listened unconvinced. 
 
 " Don't do it, Phillip," she begged. " Don't go into 
 this new combination. Leave things as they are. If 
 this Forsyth Street baker wants to form a combination 
 and discharge all these men, let him do it alone. Why 
 need you take part in it ? " 
 
 " But I explained that " 
 
 " I know, only Phil, you won't refuse me this 
 the first favor I have asked you ? " 
 
 Phillip hesitated. 
 
 " See here, Margaret, when a man and woman
 
 240 THE BATTLE 
 
 marry, there are certain things that each one knows 
 about, aren't there ? A woman knows about the home 
 and a man knows about business. And each must 
 respect the other's judgment ia those matters. Isn't 
 that true ? " 
 
 " Ye es." 
 
 " Now, I'm the wage-earner," he went on quickly. 
 " I provide the money and you must leave money mat- 
 ters to me." 
 
 Margaret watched him closely and, as he spoke, she 
 saw the suspicion of a hard look in his eyes. And she 
 knew what that meant, she remembered what Gentle 
 had told her. Perhaps this was a decisive moment 
 in Phillip's life, the turning point where a last effort 
 of hers might keep him right. 
 
 " I don't agree with you," she said. " I think a 
 wife should know about her husband's work so that 
 she can advise him and help him. And I don't want 
 you to be absorbed by money matters. If you were, 
 then your thoughts would be taken from the serious 
 purposes that that we both care about so much." 
 
 She spoke with emotion now and looked at Phillip, 
 her eyes full of a warm and soft appeal. 
 
 " That's all very well," he answered, " but the man 
 must decide about business. I'm sure of that. And 
 the woman must not interfere." 
 
 He spoke firmly, and she realized that it was his 
 father's son who was opposing her. 
 
 " Then," she murmured, " then you are not the 
 Phillip I thought you were." 
 
 " I'm sorry," he said, and there was a long silence. 
 
 And now in Margaret's heart there came a sudden
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR 241 
 
 fear. Perhaps this selfish side in her lover was stronger 
 than she had imagined. Perhaps it was too strong 
 for her. Surely she had not asked very much. She 
 would do anything for him, and he might at least do 
 this for her. It was right, it was best for him, and 
 she wanted it. These were reasons enough, and if an 
 issue must come between them let it come. 
 
 " Phillip," she said with a sudden dignity, " I ask 
 you once more not to do this thing." 
 
 " You have no right to ask that." 
 
 " I not only ask it, I insist upon it." 
 
 "You insist?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 " And and if I refuse it ? " he asked unsteadily. 
 
 " You won't refuse, you can't refuse," she pleaded. 
 And then, as she saw his face still cold : " If you 
 should refuse, then then, Phil, I should say that 
 that you had changed somehow and were not the 
 noble, high-minded man to whom I gave my love." 
 
 Phillip's lips tightened. He, too, realized that they 
 were facing a crisis. It might be the turning of the 
 ways, and his father's spirit of domination in him 
 suddenly cried out for the mastery. 
 
 " Margaret," he said in a low tone, " we seem to 
 have made something serious out of a little thing. But, 
 since we have done it, let me say this, I love you with 
 all my heart ; I have asked you to be my wife ; I will 
 work for you gladly and do everything in my power 
 to make you happy ; but you may as well understand 
 now, once for all, that, as a man, I claim the right of 
 deciding what shall be done at important moments.
 
 242 THE BATTLE 
 
 I may make mistakes, although I shall try to decide 
 wisely, but whether I make mistakes or not, what I 
 decide is the thing that shall be." 
 
 " And you have decided to do this ? " she questioned, 
 looking him straight in the eyes. " Wait ! Think ! 
 You have decided to do this, Phil, against my positive 
 wish?" 
 
 " Yes," answered Phillip, " I have."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 
 
 THE bakery trust continued to flourish. The 
 tension between Margaret, Haggleton, and Gen- 
 tle increased with its growth. Each of these three 
 felt that the decisive battle was approaching, that they 
 must be ready at any moment now for the final struggle 
 for the possession of Phillip, body and soul. But of 
 the three only Haggleton felt confident of victory. 
 
 Phillip's decision, that in business matters he must 
 follow his own judgment, had been a sore blow to 
 Margaret. Gentle, to whom she had told the outcome 
 of their momentous talk, felt discouraged, especially 
 as he had deluded himself with the belief that he 
 had regained much of the ground that had been lost 
 in his discussion with Haggleton of the tyranny of 
 capital over labor. Margaret resolutely pinned her 
 waning faith to the power of love. Meanwhile, these 
 two had loyally kept the secret of Phillip's relation- 
 ship to the millionaire, tempted though they had been 
 to betray it when Haggleton had been so radiantly 
 happy, so touchingly proud of the boy's brilliant ex- 
 ploit in saving the endangered diver, which had fur- 
 nished the leading story of the afternoon's papers. 
 Divided as they were bitter adversaries they yet 
 had felt that they had one thing in common, which 
 
 243
 
 244 THE BATTLE 
 
 drew them closer together, notwithstanding their dif- 
 ferences their love of Phillip. 
 
 The Moran apartment had undergone still another 
 change. It was an office now, brilliantly lighted, for 
 Haggleton's suggestion that the two windows facing 
 the East River should be joined into one large ob- 
 servation window had been carried out. Under this 
 window was a wide shelf, covered with flowers. The 
 room contained a high desk and stool for bookkeeping 
 Moran's department a roll-top desk, with tele- 
 phone, used in common by Jackson and Phillip, and a 
 typewriter desk for Joe Caffrey. The place looked 
 like the well-run office of a prosperous undertaking. 
 Jenny's little room had been turned into a " private 
 office." The hall door had been removed to make 
 place for one of ground glass, on which was painted in 
 large, black letters, " East Side Associated Bakeshops." 
 The flat across the hall had been rented for living pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Joe Caffrey, who had learned typewriting with grati- 
 fying celerity, had also proved useful in the dealings 
 of the association with the help, his ready humor and 
 slowness to take offense, combined with an undeniable 
 skill as a fighter, sufficiently well known, having 
 smoothed over many an initial difficulty in that quarter. 
 Haggleton, directing it all, placed upon each his full 
 share of responsibility, gauging to a nicety the amount 
 of it that each could be trusted to carry. Joe, by the 
 way, had begun to indulge his love for finery. In his 
 own words, he was a " smooth dresser." 
 
 Moran alone remained unreconciled, watching with 
 growing hostility the phenomenal rise of this man
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 245 
 
 Jackson, a failure like himself, in circumstances like 
 his own. Moran was a good bookkeeper, did his work 
 faithfully, but he remained the same bitter enemy of 
 capital. 
 
 Jenny's disappearance had been a terrible blow to 
 him. He had no delusion about the life to which she 
 had returned, and in his unreasoning hostility to so- 
 ciety ascribed this, too, to the curse of capitalism. He 
 spent all his evenings looking for her in her old haunts, 
 but in vain. 
 
 Phillip, too, worried a great deal over Jenny, even 
 though he admitted that Haggleton was right in saying 
 that the young woman's actions could in no reasonable 
 way be charged to his refusal to let her make love to 
 him. Under his new mentor's guidance the young 
 man came to see clearly every day that life is difficult 
 and complicated, and stronger far than the best-laid 
 plans of the best meaning of reformers. 
 
 One afternoon, Moran, simply but neatly dressed, 
 was working at his desk and grumbling at his work, 
 as was his wont. Joe, seated at the typewriter, was 
 ticking out letters. As usual, he found amusement in 
 his father-in-law's surliness, encouraging him from 
 time to time with skillful opposition. 
 
 " Say, Moran," he observed now, " what's the use 
 of bein' a kicker?" 
 
 " I'd rather be a kicker than a quitter," was the 
 significant answer. 
 
 " Meanin' me ? " 
 
 " Yes, you. You used to call yourself a socialist. 
 Yah!"
 
 246 THE BATTLE 
 
 " That was when I was broke." Joe laughed. " I 
 wanted to divide. Now I've got something, and say 
 no dividin' for me ! " 
 
 " Awr! " growled Moran in disgust. 
 
 Joe returned to his typewriting, stopping long enough 
 between the clicks of the machine to say: 
 
 " That's thirty-two letters I've copied. The only 
 trouble with prosperity is that it makes you hustle 
 so. Mr. Jackson certainly is a wonder." 
 
 He stopped work the better to appreciate Mr. Jack- 
 son's qualities; then took the morning's paper out of 
 his pocket and glanced at it. 
 
 " Hello ! " he exclaimed, " here's my old friend Hag- 
 gleton again. I hadn't heard from him for some time. 
 His yacht has passed Gibraltar." 
 
 " Damn him ! " growled Moran. " I hate him ! " 
 
 " I've heard you make remarks to that effect be- 
 fore," commented Joe easily. " I suppose if he offered 
 you a thousand dollars you wouldn't take it?" 
 
 " Not if he offered me a million ! If ever I came 
 face to face with that scoundrel " 
 
 " Ah, shut off the hot air. What's John J. ever done 
 to you ? " 
 
 Moran wheeled around. 
 
 " What has he done to me ? " he snarled. " He 
 ruined my little business out West and made me a 
 common laborer. He killed my wife in his rotten 
 tenement with consumption. He killed Jenny's hus- 
 band with his railroads, and he has sent Jenny out 
 into the " 
 
 "What did he have to do with that?" 
 
 " I tell you, if Jenny had lived in a decent place "
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 247 
 
 " You make me tired, Moran. If a woman has 
 twins in this tenement, they blame it on John J. Hag- 
 gleton ! Hush, here's the boss." 
 
 Haggleton entered, followed by Gentle. 
 
 The head of the East Side bakery trust sat down 
 at his desk, saying to Gentle: 
 
 " I will be with you in a moment. Go into the 
 private office." True to his resolution, the old diver 
 now kept in daily touch with Haggleton and his son. 
 The millionaire understood his motive perfectly, but 
 never betrayed the slightest impatience or irritation. 
 
 Gentle went over to Moran. 
 
 " You are a different man, Moran," he said, " since 
 you stopped drinking altogether." 
 
 " I may look different to you, but I am the same 
 man." Moran's tone was threatening. 
 
 Gentle shook his head in discouragement, and went 
 into Jenny's little room. 
 
 Haggleton, meanwhile, had been giving some di- 
 rections to Joe, and signed the letters which that 
 industrious gentleman had placed before him. 
 
 Then he glanced at the morning paper. 
 
 " Hello," he said, " another model tenement fails 
 to pay expenses. Tenants store their coal in the por- 
 celain bath tubs. Here, Joe, show this to Mr. Gentle. 
 No, wait. I'll do it myself." 
 
 He disappeared in the private office, closing the 
 door behind him. 
 
 Moran closed his ledger, opened one of the drawers 
 of his desk and took from it a revolver, which he re- 
 garded pensively. Joe, looking over his shoulder, 
 caught sight of it and was amazed.
 
 248 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Here! " he said, " what are you doin' with that? " 
 
 " Nothing," growled Moran. 
 
 " What have you got that gun for ? " persisted Joe. 
 
 " Nothing nothing, I tell you." 
 
 Moran put the pistol back into the drawer and 
 closed and locked it. 
 
 Joe, secretly much disturbed, proceeded to apply 
 his customary treatment of semi-contemptuous, brutal 
 banter. 
 
 " You have been playin' with that gun for years, 
 Moran. What's the use? You'd never dare to use 
 it. You're a milk-and-water anarchist. Why don't 
 you get a bunch of firecrackers? They make more 
 noise for less money. What's the matter with you, 
 anyway ? " 
 
 Moran turned around again from the desk. 
 
 " I am a fool," he announced gloomily. " I had no 
 business to take this job." 
 
 "Well, then why did you take it?" 
 
 " I was out of work I wanted to help Jenny. 
 Never mind what she has been She is my daugh- 
 ter she's all I have got and now she's gone I have 
 lost her." 
 
 Two tears rolled slowly down his flabby cheeks. 
 Joe was touched. He felt sincerely sorry, but, after 
 the manner of his kind, ashamed of this " softness." 
 So he replied airily: 
 
 " Jenny will turn up all right." 
 
 Despair distorted the old man's features. 
 
 " Where will she turn up ? " he asked in an agony 
 of apprehension. " What is she doing now ? My 
 God ! "
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 249 
 
 Joe became impatient. 
 
 " You've got a rotten philosophy ! " he ejaculated. 
 " Whatever is, is wrong. That's the way you dope it 
 out. Say, you'd better get busy and mail them let- 
 ters Mr. Jackson has signed or you'll lose this job 
 you're so ashamed of." 
 
 Moran obediently put on his coat and hat, took up 
 the pile of correspondence which Joe had meanwhile 
 stamped with lightning rapidity, and walked toward 
 the door. 
 
 Joe returned to his typewriting. 
 
 Moran, however, having reached the door, stopped, 
 hesitated, and turned back. He approached Joe's desk, 
 leaned over it, and looked him straight in the eyes. 
 The grim determination of his face daunted Joe a 
 little. 
 
 " Here, you," said the old man significantly, " I 
 want to know something, and I mean to find out. 
 Where is Jenny ? " 
 
 Joe shifted his eyes from Moran's face to the wall 
 behind it, and wriggled uneasily in his chair. 
 
 " Why er " he stammered. 
 
 " Answer my question," said the other man, with 
 ominous calm. 
 
 " I don't know, Moran." 
 
 " I believe you are lying. You know where she is 
 and what she is. Mark my words, I will find that 
 girl ! I will find her, I tell you ! " 
 
 He continued to look at Joe in silence, with a new 
 determination in his watery, wavering eyes. His 
 flabby mouth was drawn in a tight line. Joe was 
 startled again, but again mastered himself. He looked
 
 250 THE BATTLE 
 
 back boldly, steadfastly, resolved to keep to himself 
 what he knew. 
 
 Moran's next action startled him still more. The 
 old man returned to his desk, took his keys out of his 
 pocket, unlocked the drawer, took from it the re- 
 volver, and slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat. 
 
 Then he turned again to Joe, gave him another look 
 full of hidden meaning, nodded at him, and left the 
 office without a further word. 
 
 Joe got up and walked up and down. He was now 
 deeply disturbed, far more so than he would admit, 
 even to himself. Born and bred in the toughest quarter 
 of New York, considerably of a tough himself at one 
 time, he prided himself on his bravado, but this sud- 
 den demonstration of firmness by the flabby, vacil- 
 lating, mouthing Moran well, he did not like it. No 
 man is so dangerous, he knew, as a coward with a 
 gun when he screws his cowardice up to the sticking 
 point. 
 
 For whom was that revolver meant? 
 
 He cast about in his mind, but could settle on no 
 particular person. Moran's hatreds were so all-inclu- 
 sive, social and economic in the aggregate, rather than 
 particular. 
 
 Of course John J. Haggleton was to Moran the 
 incarnation of all the evils of society, including the 
 evil whose victim Jenny was. But John J. was away 
 on his yacht for a three months' cruise, and Moran 
 could not reach him with a pistol across the Atlantic 
 Ocean at Gibraltar. 
 
 There were the police, and the police justices on 
 their benches, and the settlement workers, whose so-
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 251 
 
 cial superiority Moran detested, always talking of their 
 labors with contempt. He hated the Czar of Russia, 
 and the president of the republic. His hatreds began 
 at the top and reached down to where did they stop ? 
 He seemed even to hate the poor around him, because 
 they did not rise and destroy society. Moran expected 
 others to do everything while he waited for them to 
 do it, and harangued about it, Joe reflected in a quick 
 parenthesis. 
 
 But there was the pistol, and the desperate look 
 of the man at bay in Moran's eyes. Why had he 
 taken it from its hiding place now? 
 
 He did not like Jackson, who had given him a new 
 start in life. He merely tolerated Gentle, who ad- 
 vocated industrial social evolution and sternly disap- 
 proved all revolutionary violence. He had begun to 
 sneer at Phillip and his sudden business activity. He 
 was rude to Margaret Lawrence, who certainly was 
 doing good day and night in the district Jenny alone 
 he loved. 
 
 Perhaps he hated Joe himself? Jx)e knew that he 
 habitually and deliberately exasperated the old man 
 whenever he talked his idle, aimless gospel of violence 
 and destruction. He thought of the pistol again. It 
 might be turned against himself. Joe stopped in his 
 walk. Moran, the butt of his rough humor and con- 
 tempt, suddenly assumed threatening proportions. 
 
 He remembered that he had heard the leader of 
 a gang say upon one occasion : " When a man threat- 
 ens you with a gun, shoot first, and do it quick. But 
 if you are unarmed, get hold of his windpipe and 
 squeeze. No man who feels the life being strangled
 
 252 THE BATTLE 
 
 out of him ever had presence of mind enough left to 
 shoot. Instinct tells him to tear those hands away 
 from his throat to get air, to breathe. He will 
 drop his gun to do it before he will fire." 
 
 So that might have to be the ticket! 
 
 Joe lighted a cigarette and regained his equanimity. 
 After all, what was he thinking about? Such non- 
 sense! He dismissed the subject from his mind. 
 
 " He's an awful bluff," he said, half aloud. " He's 
 a wind anarchist! He couldn't blow up a red bal- 
 loon!" 
 
 Moran had left the office a little before five in the 
 afternoon. He mailed the bundle of letters mechan- 
 ically, then stood a moment trying to decide what to 
 do next. It was no use to return to the office in 
 his present state of mind, he concluded ; moreover, they 
 would close in an hour. And, anyhow, he did not care. 
 
 Since Jenny's disappearance the household in the 
 tenement had changed into a bachelors' home, whose 
 inmates took dinner at a neighboring restaurant. There 
 was nothing to attract Moran thither nothing but 
 talks between Jackson and Phillip about business and 
 money-making, Joe listening in silence, Gentle inter- 
 posing his peaceful ideal of an industrial socialism 
 whenever he happened to be present. And he, Moran, 
 was invariably suppressed when he advocated violence. 
 
 So he resolved to dine somewhere else, and then 
 to resume his search, his unending, desperate search, 
 for his erring daughter. 
 
 But first he wanted a drink. Moran had never been 
 a heavy drinker, but his head was weak, and a little
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 253 
 
 alcohol sufficed to intoxicate him. He entered a 
 saloon the nearest at hand and had his drink, then 
 took another, and still another, with a couple of men 
 who, he discovered, were fomenting trouble among 
 the hands of the bakery combine. His mind was still 
 sufficiently clear to remember suddenly that Jackson 
 and Phillip had been discussing the possibility of a 
 strike of late, and that Joe had pooh-poohed the idea. 
 
 He forgot his dinner, mechanically ate of the " free 
 lunch " provided by the saloon keeper, and emerged 
 at nine o'clock to take up his hunt for his daughter. 
 
 He walked the Bowery from Chinatown to the 
 Bible House, back and forth. A fine drizzle was fall- 
 ing, but he did not feel it. The elevated trains roared 
 overhead, but he did not hear them. He was thinking 
 of Jenny. If he could only find her or forget or 
 be revenged upon society! 
 
 It was after nine when he turned into Doyer Street, 
 where evil-looking Chinamen were skulking under 
 dark doorways. He recognized the smell of burning 
 opium. He heard the harsh tom-tom in the Chinese 
 theater, and from the Doyer Street Mission just be- 
 yond came the fragment of a Gospel hymn: 
 
 " Oh Depths of Mercy ! Can it be 
 That gate was left ajar for me!" 
 
 For a moment he stood irresolute, almost ready to 
 go in and throw himself on his knees and pray for 
 help. But he reflected that nothing would come of 
 that ; they could not help him. O God, if he could only 
 find her ! 
 
 He turned into a narrow street where red lanterns
 
 254 THE BATTLE 
 
 were burning. They were making repairs here and he 
 sat down on the iron elbow of a sewer pipe. He sat in 
 the rain and thought in a dull way for a long time. 
 And presently a woman approached, and he saw that 
 she had strange dark eyes. 
 
 " Hello," she said, " you're all wet." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 She looked at him with a kind of wistful tenderness. 
 
 " Feelin' blue, ain't ye? Same here." 
 
 " What's the matter with you ? " inquired Moran 
 listlessly. 
 
 " I'm all broke up," she said. " I've been livin' 
 with a Chink an' I've just quit him." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " 'Cause I'm takin' too much dope. Fifty pills a day 
 is too much, ain't it? The missionary doctor says I 
 can't live six months if I don't cut it out. So I've 
 cut the Chinaman out, too." 
 
 " Do you know Jenny Moran ? " 
 
 He watched the wretched woman eagerly. 
 
 " Jenny Moran ? Sure. She ain't here. She's a 
 good-looker. She's up in the Tenderloin. She stayed 
 down here one day. If you want to find her, you 
 must go to the ' Haymarket.' " 
 
 Moran rose. Without thanking the woman, with- 
 out giving her a second look, he walked rapidly away, 
 back to the Bowery. At Chatham Square he took the 
 Elevated, and within twenty minutes stood at the en- 
 trance of the notorious resort. 
 
 Outside the open door he paused, under green elec- 
 tric lights, and watched the men and women as they 
 entered. Each man went to a window and bought a
 
 MORAN FINDS JENNY 255 
 
 ticket, but the women were admitted free, save for 
 the quick scrutiny of a man about sixty who sat in 
 the hallway and studied every face with hard eyes. 
 His hair was white and so was his scrubby brush 
 mustache, and his jaw worked nervously chewing 
 gum. He never smiled, and his eyes never changed 
 in their steady watchfulness. One of the girls called 
 him " Papa " as she passed. It was plain that he knew 
 all these women by name, that he would never for- 
 get one of them, even after years. A strange and 
 sinister figure this doorkeeper at the " Haymarket " ! 
 
 Moran approached and asked the man if he knew 
 Jenny Moran. 
 
 " Not here yet," was the answer snapped out from 
 the chewing jaws. 
 
 "Will she be here?" 
 
 The doorkeeper looked at his questioner sharply and 
 then said : " Sure." 
 
 Moran bought a ticket and went inside. He found 
 himself in a tawdry dance hall surrounded by gal- 
 leries. The music was furnished by a banging or- 
 chestra at the farther end, to the strains of which a 
 dozen couples were whirling about on the smooth floor, 
 the women clinging close to the men. The faces of 
 the women were quite expressionless, but hard, like 
 dolls that had become suspicious of the world. Some 
 of the men were well dressed and a few looked like 
 college students. 
 
 The old man went upstairs and seated himself at 
 a small table, and almost immediately an old woman of 
 twenty took the chair beside him. 
 
 " Hello, dear," she began, " will you treat me? "
 
 256 THE BATTLE 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Gee, you're stingy ! " 
 
 She said this in a dull way, as if she did not care 
 whether he treated her or not. 
 
 A man passed them who was the very picture of a 
 prize fighter, with massive shoulders and a heavy bru- 
 tal jaw. He wore a Tuxedo coat and a diamond 
 flashed in his shirt front. He seemed to be on duty. 
 
 "Who's that?" inquired Moran. 
 
 " That's Bill, the bouncer," she answered. 
 
 Moran wondered how long he must wait for Jenny, 
 and, musing, he recalled Jenny of the old days, with 
 her lithe figure and wonderful dark eyes, his little 
 daughter, so fond and loyal. He thought of her wed- 
 ding day when all the tenement neighbors had crowded 
 in with congratulations. And of the little baby that 
 came and the young mother's pride in it. And then 
 of her husband's sudden death and ah, it did not 
 seem possible she had come to this! 
 
 As he pondered these things, he heard a voice beside 
 him exclaim, ''Father!" and, looking up, he saw 
 Jenny. She wore a large black hat with white ostrich 
 plumes and a tan coat lined with silk over a hand- 
 some red dress. 
 
 " Jenny ! " he said with unexpected quiet, " I've been 
 waiting for you." 
 
 She followed him without a word, pale and trem- 
 bling, into the street, across town, and into a Fourth 
 Avenue car. Not a word passed between them ; they 
 sat side by side, her hand in his, the tears rolling 
 unchecked down her painted cheeks, his face grim, 
 a baleful light in his eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 
 
 THE offices of the East Side Associated Bakeshops 
 had not closed that evening at the customary 
 hour, however. The threatened strike had suddenly 
 assumed ugly proportions. Phillip had come in seri- 
 ously worried by this, and by pressing inquiries from 
 the agent of the flour mills, who had heard of it, and 
 was anxious over the credits he had extended to the 
 new enterprise. In short, the trust faced a crisis. 
 Haggleton laughed a little when Phillip told him his 
 perplexities, and reassured him, then went out to din- 
 ner with Gentle. Joe was dismissed for the evening. 
 
 Haggleton secretly welcomed the trouble with the 
 hands in the bakeshops. What he foresaw came to 
 pass. Phillip, face to face with the poor in his new 
 position as a business man, suddenly discovered their 
 unreasonableness, their lack of foresight, their self- 
 ishness, which could not calculate future benefits, their 
 disregard of the good of the money. Without real- 
 izing it, he ranged himself that evening on the side of 
 capital. 
 
 So he stayed on alone in the office, waiting for news, 
 watching the telephone. Haggleton and Gentle re- 
 turned, the former stopping a moment to ask for 
 news, then went across the hall to the other apartment. 
 
 At nine o'clock Margaret suddenly appeared. She 
 257
 
 258 THE BATTLE 
 
 had a new grievance against the trust, a clinching ar- 
 gument that, she hoped, would turn the tide of battle 
 in her favor and give her victory. She loved Phillip 
 more than ever, but, after that momentous talk in 
 which he had excluded her from the business side of 
 his life, her mind was made up. She must win, or 
 he must lose her. There should be no compromise ! 
 
 Her stern purpose was delayed, however, by her re- 
 ception. Phillip clasped her tumultuously in his strong 
 arms. 
 
 " You darling ! " he exulted ; " oh, you darling ! You 
 never looked so adorable as you do now." 
 
 He kissed her fondly again and again. She sur- 
 rendered for a moment to the spell of their young love, 
 then pushed him from her. 
 
 " Be very sensible, now," she said, with mock seri- 
 ousness, yet with unmistakable determination ; " I have 
 much to say to you." 
 
 " Pleasure before business just for once, sweetheart. 
 Give me your left hand, so! Now close your eyes." 
 
 She obeyed with a smile. Phillip took from his 
 waistcoat pocket an engagement ring and slipped it 
 on her finger. 
 
 " Don't open your eyes yet," he warned. 
 
 She stood, the dark lashes resting on her cheeks, 
 her pretty hand outstretched. Phillip again took her 
 into his arms and kissed her. 
 
 " Now look," he commanded. 
 
 Margaret did look at the ring, of course, and gave 
 a little cry of glad surprise. 
 
 " What a beautiful ring, Phil ! It is much too nice ! 
 But but I just love it."
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 259 
 
 She kissed the ring, then held up her lips to him. 
 
 They stood again, clasped in each other's arms, in 
 exquisite, blissful silence. But in a few moments Mar- 
 garet regretfully but resolutely disengaged herself, and 
 prudently got behind the defense of Joe's desk. 
 
 " O Phil ! " she said pitifully, " I came to tell you 
 about You remember Emmy and Benny, the little 
 children we sent to the hospital ? " 
 
 " I know, dear. Their father hurt his hand the 
 other day." 
 
 " Hurt his hand ! It was crushed in your kneading 
 machine, and now it has been amputated." 
 
 Phil sat down on the other side of the typewriter 
 and said in an offhand way : 
 
 " That's a pity, but it is his own fault. He was 
 careless." 
 
 " His children were left unprovided for," continued 
 Margaret reproachfully, " and now little Benny is 
 dead." 
 
 Phillip looked concerned. 
 
 " I am sincerely sorry to hear it," he began, but 
 just then the telephone bell rang, and he hurried over 
 to the instrument. 
 
 Margaret saw with a pang that little Benny and 
 his maimed father were immediately forgotten. This 
 was business ! Her lips curled a little disdainfully, then 
 her heart sank, as she listened to her lover's side of 
 the brisk conversation over the 'phone : 
 
 "Hello! The Wisconsin flour mills? Yes, this 
 is the East Side Associated Bakeshops What's that? 
 Oh, that's all right; we have the strike pretty well 
 in hand Yes, the bills will be promptly met No, no,
 
 260 THE BATTLE 
 
 Mr. Williams, we are taking fifty car loads a week 
 now, and there's a Minneapolis concern that will do 
 better by us Yes, that's right, that's what we ask, 
 twenty per cent off I didn't catch what you said 
 Yes, I know that we must be making money, that's 
 what we are here for Oh, no, it's twenty off, or 
 nothing doing All right? Good-by." 
 
 He hung up the receiver and turned back to Mar- 
 garet. 
 
 " Excuse me, dear," he said, " but business is busi- 
 ness. What were you saying?" 
 
 " O Phil, don't you see what is happening? Don't 
 you feel the change that is coming over you?" 
 
 " I don't understand you, dearest." 
 
 " No, because you are blind. You are under the 
 spell of Mr. Jackson. You say that the whole East 
 Side is benefiting by this money-making scheme. . . . 
 Is that poor man who lost his hand benefiting? And 
 his lonely little girl ? And the bakers who are thrown 
 out of work? Are they benefiting? " 
 
 " We must think of the greatest good of the great- 
 est number." 
 
 " Mr. Jackson does not. He thinks only of his 
 own selfish interest." 
 
 " That is not kind, Margaret. I know more than 
 you do. Mr. Jackson came down here at a great sac- 
 rifice. He's actually living in a tenement." 
 
 Margaret was on the point of answering that she 
 knew Jackson's real name and identity, but caught 
 herself in time. She accepted Phillip's statement with- 
 out comment, and rejoined : 
 
 " He came down here at a great sacrifice, you say ?
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 261 
 
 Why ? Did he need this bakeshop money ? No ! Then 
 why did he do it? " 
 
 Phillip was ready with his answer: 
 
 " He wished to study tenement conditions." But, 
 even so, Margaret's question had awakened a doubt. 
 She saw it, and pushed home her advantage. 
 
 "Has Mr. Jackson studied tenement conditions?" 
 she asked scornfully. " Do you see any tenement 
 conditions here? You know that wasn't the reason, 
 don't you, Phil?" 
 
 " Well perhaps it wasn't." 
 
 Margaret returned to the personal phase of her 
 problem : 
 
 " Phil, have you not noticed that I have been wor- 
 ried and unhappy lately ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have, dear." 
 
 " It is what you said to me the other evening about 
 business being the man's province, not the woman's. 
 It is because I have seen you become entirely absorbed 
 in business schemes and money-making nothing but 
 plans for making more money. Phil, you are for- 
 getting your beautiful ideals ! " 
 
 The young man looked at her. The truth of what 
 she had just said was undeniable. Yes, he was for- 
 getting his beautiful ideals, his high altruistic pur- 
 pose. 
 
 " It's true," he said at last thoughtfully. " Mr. 
 Jackson has had an influence over me. I am different 
 from what I was before he came. It is as if he had 
 waked up something in me that I did not know 
 was there." 
 
 " O Phil ! " cried Margaret in dismay.
 
 262 THE BATTLE 
 
 " No, I have not really forgotten my ideals," con- 
 tinued Phillip, reasoning out his own case, " only I 
 have come to see that money is needed to carry them 
 out. Money is needed to help the poor, and money is 
 needed to make you happy ! " 
 
 " I don't want money." 
 
 " Well, I do." He spoke with decision. " And I am 
 going to have it. And that means an active business 
 life for me." 
 
 " You will give up diving? " 
 
 " Diving is no career. There is no future in it. 
 It wears a man out before his time. Look at Gentle ! " 
 
 Margaret was astonished and hurt. This bakery 
 scheme, which, deep in her heart, she had still con- 
 sidered as but a passing danger, threatening, but not 
 fatal, had apparently already become his aim in life, 
 the first stepping-stone to wealth ! 
 
 " You have decided all this without telling me ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " I am telling you now, dear. We can talk it over 
 together." 
 
 " My poor, poor boy! " 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " 
 
 " Because " 
 
 Margaret again caught herself in time. No, she 
 must not speak as yet. 
 
 She reverted to the immediate purpose of her com- 
 ing. 
 
 " Phil," she said, " there's something that must be 
 done at once before we settle this. I promised Emmy 
 that I would see about little Benny's funeral will 
 you come with me?"
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 263 
 
 She rose and held out her hand pleadingly. 
 
 Phil, too, got up, but hesitated. 
 
 " Why er I don't see how I can," he replied. 
 
 " It's such a pitiful case, Phil." 
 
 " I'll gladly give money " 
 
 " Money ! " she burst out. " It's all money now ! 
 You have always said that the only way to help the 
 poor was to love them ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes." His voice was impatient. " But, you 
 see, there's that bakers' strike. I may be called up 
 on the 'phone at any moment. I must stay here. Seri- 
 ous interests are at stake." 
 
 Margaret grew indignant. 
 
 " I hate your serious interests," she cried, " and your 
 bakeshops, and all of it." Her voice became pleading 
 again as she concluded: 
 
 " Phil, dear Phil, leave this business scheming ! 
 Give it up for my sake, for your own ! " 
 
 " I will do everything I can to please you, Mar- 
 garet. I will work for you, I will protect you, love 
 you, but, dearest, as I have told you, it is the man 
 who must decide business matters, and I have de- 
 cided this." 
 
 "You have decided this," repeated the woman 
 slowly, wistfully. 
 
 There was sorrow in her eyes, and pity. But sud- 
 denly she reached a determination. 
 
 " Yes, Phil," she said, with grave emphasis, " you 
 have decided, and you have decided far more than 
 you know." 
 
 She stepped to the door, crossed the hall, and 
 knocked.
 
 264 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Wait," Phillip said, in astonishment, following 
 her. " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 " I am going to call Mr. Haggleton." 
 
 " You know who he is ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She opened the door of the living apartment in 
 answer to the call from within, and said : 
 
 " Will you come out here a moment, Mr. Haggle- 
 ton? You, too, Mr. Gentle, please?" 
 
 " But they have nothing to do with this," objected 
 Phillip. 
 
 " They have everything to do with it. I told you 
 that you had decided more than you knew." 
 
 Haggleton and Gentle entered, an inquiry on their 
 faces. Both had an inkling of what was coming 
 the precipitation of a crisis, perhaps certainly a dec- 
 laration of open war. 
 
 Margaret stepped between Haggleton and Phillip, 
 looking from one to the other. 
 
 " Phil," she said in a ringing voice, " for the last 
 time, choose between him and me ! " 
 
 Gentle moved aside, as if to leave a clear field to 
 the principals in this momentous matter. An idea 
 struck him. 
 
 " The battle is on," he announced, half aloud. 
 
 "What battle, Gentle?" asked Phillip; but it was 
 Margaret who answered him. 
 
 " The battle for you, Phillip the battle between 
 your better self and your baser nature! I want you 
 to speak out, Phil, right from your soul, and say what 
 you think of Mr. Haggleton's life." 
 
 " I don't understand." Phillip was puzzled, and a
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 265 
 
 little impatient. " What has Mr. Haggleton's life to 
 do with us ? " 
 
 " More than you dream of, Phil ! " Her voice was 
 tender, yearning. " Trust me," she continued with 
 great seriousness. " Do what I say, if you love me. 
 Tell Mr. Haggleton whether you approve of him, or 
 not." 
 
 " I like him." 
 
 " But what do you think of his business methods ? " 
 
 Phillip's answer was unwilling, but frank: 
 
 " If you put it that way," he said, " why I don't." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Margaret exultingly. This was the 
 old Phillip, the Phillip she loved ! 
 
 Haggleton stepped forward, sat down at his desk, 
 looked up at the young man, and asked tranquilly: 
 
 " What is it you do not approve of in my business 
 methods ? " 
 
 " You know that, Mr. Haggleton. Every schoolboy 
 knows. It's the old thing monopoly and bribery and 
 rebates why go into it all again ? " 
 
 " Go on ! " commanded Margaret. 
 
 Phillip obeyed. 
 
 " You know very well, Mr. Haggleton," he con- 
 tinued, " that you and a dozen other men practically 
 own this Republic." 
 
 " That's true," asserted Gentle. 
 
 " No, it isn't," decided Haggleton with authority. 
 
 " Don't you control prices ? " asked Phillip. " Don't 
 you force people to pay what you like for public 
 necessaries ? " 
 
 Haggleton did not rise. He barely moved, but he 
 took command of the discussion right there, none the
 
 266 THE BATTLE 
 
 less. They all three turned to him with eager atten- 
 tion as he began : 
 
 " Listen to me. No big work has ever been done 
 in this world without leaders, and when a man de- 
 livers the goods he's entitled to the reward. Well, we 
 have delivered the goods in this country." 
 
 He paused a moment, looking from one to the other, 
 with dignity and the pride of great achievement. 
 Then, fixing his eyes on Phillip, he resumed : 
 
 " Go over to Europe, and ask what they think of 
 the United States ? They'll tell you that it's the great- 
 est nation on earth and it is. Why is it? Because 
 the men you call robbers and grafters have organized 
 things railroads, industries, banks, everything." 
 
 " You have organized things for yourselves," inter- 
 posed Gentle, " and you have broken the law." 
 
 " You haven't been honest," added Margaret. 
 
 "Honest?" Haggleton smiled grimly. "I will 
 tell you what we have done," he went on. " We have 
 kept to the standard of average honesty of this coun- 
 try, and no man can succeed in business who keeps 
 above it. The faults of America's industrial leaders 
 are the faults of the American people." 
 
 " No ! " shouted Gentle. 
 
 " Yes ! " affirmed Haggleton. " You attack us and 
 blackguard us, but you know in your hearts that 
 you'd do exactly what we do if you had the chance. 
 You know we are precisely as honest as the aver- 
 age American citizen. If we weren't, we would be 
 in jail ! " 
 
 Haggleton was leaning back in his chair in an easy 
 attitude, his hands in his trousers pockets. He had 

 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 267 
 
 still more to say. He would answer them point by 
 point. 
 
 " You say we break the law, Mr. Gentle," he con- 
 tinued. " Well, we do, but who doesn't ? Give the 
 average American citizen an automobile, and watch 
 him break the speed law. Let a policeman stop 
 him, and see the flash of a ten-dollar bill! That's 
 bribery. 
 
 " Watch the average American woman back from 
 Paris with a lot of new dresses. Does she smuggle 
 them in? Well, watch her! 
 
 " I tell you, the only law anybody respects is cus- 
 tom. What does the average American citizen do 
 when he wants a drink in a prohibition State? He 
 breaks the law and gets the drink. And the average 
 American woman, when she tells the conductor how 
 old her little boy is? She's a good mother, and all 
 that, but she'd let Jimmie ride on a half-fare ticket 
 until he had whiskers, if she could ! " 
 
 Haggleton rose. He was reaching the direct per- 
 sonal application of his argument, the real point to- 
 ward which he had been working. 
 
 " When it comes to business," he summed up, " the 
 average American citizen does, in a small way, exactly 
 what we do in a big way. Give him a chance to crush 
 a rival, and see how quick he'll take it ! " 
 
 He turned suddenly full on Phillip, and shot out 
 his finger at him. 
 
 " What have you been doing to those opposition 
 bakers?" he asked peremptorily. 
 
 Phillip was taken aback. It was true, he had ad- 
 vocated a short shift for those fools, who could not
 
 268 THE BATTLE 
 
 see their own interests as he saw them, and had put 
 the measure in operation with considerable success. 
 
 " Why," he stammered, " I " 
 
 " You have done in a small way what I have done 
 in a big way," said Haggleton for him. " There you 
 are, you had to. I am not reproaching you, I am not 
 calling your attention to your inconsistency I am 
 stating facts, hard, incontrovertible facts. And re- 
 member this, you reformers, the way to improve 
 things is not to attack and declaim and stir up class 
 hatred, but to raise the standard of honesty of the 
 American people ! " 
 
 " Do you believe that, Phillip ? " asked Margaret. 
 
 " There's a lot in what he says." The young man 
 was pondering over what he had heard. 
 
 Gentle brought the conversation back to its im- 
 mediate, personal bearing. 
 
 " All that is not to the point," he asserted. " Would 
 you do as Mr. Haggleton has done ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," Phillip's answer came promptly. 
 " I won't lead that kind of life." 
 
 " But you say that you are going into business," 
 argued Margaret. 
 
 " Yes but I am not going to be a railroad president 
 or a trust magnate." 
 
 The situation was growing tense. Margaret and 
 Gentle looked at Phillip, ignorant of his true future, 
 and called upon, in his ignorance, to answer this mo- 
 mentous question regarding it. 
 
 Haggleton kept himself well in hand. 
 
 " Suppose you were called upon to be the head of 
 a great railroad or a trust? " asked Gentle.
 
 THE BATTLE IS ON 269 
 
 "That's foolish!" 
 
 " No, Phil, it's not foolish," Margaret spoke up. 
 " Suppose suppose you were in Mr. Haggleton's 
 place, what would you do? Think, dear, before you 
 answer. W 'hat would you do? " 
 
 Haggleton judged the moment ripe. 
 
 "If you had important interests in trust, Phillip," he 
 asked in his usual clear, incisive way, " would you 
 protect them or would you sacrifice them ? " 
 
 The answer came without a moment's hesitation : 
 
 " I would protect them." 
 
 " Would you be dishonest? " persisted Gentle. 
 
 Haggleton again reshaped the question from his own 
 point of view : 
 
 " Would you cripple your business by refusing to 
 allow practices sanctioned by custom? " 
 
 " Dishonest practices," Margaret put in swiftly 
 "would you, Phil?" 
 
 But Phillip was bewildered now. The theories in- 
 stilled in him from childhood pulled one way ; the com- 
 mon sense of Haggleton, backed up by his own brief 
 insight into business, pointed the other. 
 
 " I I don't know," he stammered. " It isn't fair 
 to ask such questions." 
 
 Margaret made a despairing gesture. 
 
 " My poor boy ! " she said. 
 
 Then, turning to Gentle, she declared : 
 
 " I am not going to be silent any longer." 
 
 Gentle made as if to restrain Margaret, but Hag- 
 gleton nodded. He was ready for the disclosure 
 and its consequences. If he had not yet won, he 
 certainly had dislodged the enemy from their posi-
 
 270 THE BATTLE 
 
 tions. It was he who had won ground, it was they 
 who had lost. 
 
 Margaret's words puzzled Phillip. 
 
 " You are not going to be silent any longer, Mar- 
 garet? " he asked. " Silent about what? " 
 
 " I am going to do the last thing I can to prove my 
 love for you, Phillip. I am going to see to it that 
 you know the truth; then I am going back to my 
 work." 
 
 " You are not going to marry me ? " 
 
 " No, dear, I cannot." 
 
 "But why? What's the matter? There is some 
 mystery here ! What is it ? " 
 
 He glanced at Gentle, who silently shook his head, 
 at Haggleton, and, following the direction of his eyes, 
 at Margaret. 
 
 " Tell me! " he pleaded, " what is it? " 
 
 She waited one brief moment, as if hesitating. Then 
 she took a step forward, looked at him steadily, and 
 said: 
 
 " Phillip, Mr. Haggleton is your father."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 
 
 THE young man started violently. 
 His father! 
 
 This, then, was the mystery of his parentage, which 
 Gentle had known so long. But Margaret, how did 
 she know ? 
 
 He looked at the two men, standing motionless, 
 hardly breathing, watching him with a painful tension. 
 As his eyes met Margaret's she nodded and repeated 
 her words. 
 
 But then was it true ? Neither Gentle nor Haggle- 
 ton had volunteered to affirm the statement. 
 
 A doubt came to him, and with it a sudden question. 
 
 " My name is Phillip Ames, is it not ? " he asked 
 Gentle. 
 
 The old diver gravely answered him: 
 
 " Your name is Phillip Haggleton." 
 
 So it was true. 
 
 Suddenly he began to see clear. Much that had 
 puzzled him was explained, though as much again re- 
 mained obscure. On one point he felt enlightened 
 beyond need of further explanation ; the sympathy he 
 had felt for Haggleton from the first, the good quali- 
 ties he had discovered in this most hated of all the 
 capitalists of the day, the readiness with which he had 
 
 271
 
 272 THE BATTLE 
 
 come to understand his point of view, and to accept 
 it in part all this was the call of the blood. Ah, yes, 
 he was his father's son. 
 
 He was recalled to the present by Margaret's voice. 
 
 " Now you understand," she was saying. 
 
 He pondered this, the light penetrating ever farther 
 into his mind and clearing up its confusion. 
 
 " So that's why you are leaving me, Margaret ? " 
 he asked " that's why you will not marry me ? " 
 
 He was in love, deeply in love. Though the future 
 thus suddenly opened up before him, was dazzling in 
 its brilliancy, tempting beyond words, a future of un- 
 told wealth, of boundless opportunity, of a seat among 
 the rulers of the modern world, this thought of his love 
 presented itself first to him, and this alone. 
 
 He did not stop to realize what he gained, he felt 
 only what he would lose ! Margaret would not marry 
 him! She would pass out of his life, resolutely, dis- 
 dainingly ! 
 
 He turned to his father. 
 
 " What reason had you," he asked sternly, " ior not 
 telling me that I am your son? " 
 
 The answer was gently spoken. 
 
 " Because, Phillip, I wanted you to know me as a 
 man before you knew me as a father." 
 
 Margaret interposed. She would see to it that no 
 more misrepresentations were made, no more evasions 
 practiced. 
 
 " Was that your only reason, Mr. Haggleton ? " she 
 asked severely. " Didn't something happen in your 
 first talk with Mr. Gentle ? " 
 
 Phillip, all his senses now acute, anxious to probe to
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 273 
 
 the bottom of this mystery, acted upon her suggestion. 
 He turned to Gentle. 
 
 " Did something happen, Gentle ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, Phillip," said his old friend gravely, unwill- 
 ingly, " something happened." 
 
 Margaret's mind reverted to the story Gentle had 
 told of the night Phillip's mother sought shelter for 
 herself and little boy in Mrs. Binney's boarding house. 
 He had said that the fault had been the father's, not 
 the mother's. 
 
 " I see ! " she exclaimed, suddenly enlightened, 
 " some wrong has been done." 
 
 She looked expectantly at Gentle, her ally thus far 
 in her attempts to counteract Haggleton's influence, 
 but he evaded her eyes, and continued to look at 
 Phillip with ever-growing gravity. 
 
 " Some wrong has been done, and Mr. Gentle knows 
 it," persisted Margaret, roused to a higher pitch by his 
 defection. 
 
 " Whatever wrong there was," said the old diver 
 impressively, " will be atoned for nobly. Your father, 
 Phillip, will put aside ten million dollars for a splendid 
 campaign against poverty." 
 
 " So that's how he managed you, Mr. Gentle ! " 
 cried Margaret, contempt in her voice and tears of de- 
 feat in her eyes. Turning upon the millionaire, she 
 said with biting irony : 
 
 " You are a master of men, Mr. Haggleton ! You 
 find the weak point in each man and use it. But you 
 must learn a little more about women. You have shut 
 Mr. Gentle's lips, but you shan't shut mine ! My name 
 is Margaret. His mother's name and the spirit of the
 
 274 THE BATTLE 
 
 wife you could not manage are here in the girl you 
 cannot manage." 
 
 Gentle interfered. The tolerant wisdom that comes 
 with years was in his voice as he protested : 
 
 " Margaret, it is the attribute of youth to be severe. 
 I have not sold my silence. This money is for the poor 
 not a penny of it is for me." 
 
 He dismissed all further thought of himself as he 
 addressed the young man : 
 
 " Phillip," he said appealingly, " you know my life. 
 You trust me ? " 
 
 " Yes." The answer came without hesitation or res- 
 ervation. 
 
 " Then you will believe me when I tell you that I 
 have done what your mother would have wished." 
 
 But Margaret would not give up the fight for the 
 possession of her lover, the very life of her love, thus 
 easily. 
 
 " That is not for you to decide, Mr. Gentle ! " she 
 cried. " The question now is, Have you evidence of 
 the wrong committed by Mr. Haggleton ? " 
 
 The millionaire, who had stood by, biding his time, 
 now again took the management of the discussion into 
 his masterful hands. 
 
 " One moment," he said in that crisp, penetrating 
 voice of his, which commanded attention. The other 
 three turned to him, as he had known they would, and 
 waited for what he had to say. 
 
 " Phillip," he went on, " you have said that you did 
 not want to judge any man. Now listen well: Can 
 you understand a man doing something under sudden 
 temptation that he regrets afterwards?"
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 275 
 
 " Yes, I can." 
 
 " Can you understand that there might be some one 
 whom this man loved very much; who would suffer 
 pain, needless pain, if told what he had done? Can 
 you understand that ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Phillip once more, glancing at Mar- 
 garet, " I can." 
 
 " That's not the case," interrupted the girl. " This 
 is it: Your mother deprived you of your name and 
 birthright. That was a monstrous crime unless she 
 had justification. You can understand that? " 
 
 The young man nodded in silent perturbation. 
 
 " You are right, Miss Lawrence," admitted Gentle, 
 suddenly convinced. 
 
 " For his mother's sake," he continued, turning to 
 Haggleton, " I'm sorry but Here, Phillip." 
 
 He drew from his pocket the incriminating docu- 
 ment, in its envelope, and handed it to the young man, 
 who took it hesitatingly, uncertain of his course of 
 action. 
 
 " Is this something I ought to read ? " he asked of 
 his old friend. 
 
 " In my opinion, no. That's why I have kept it 
 from you. But if you insist " 
 
 " I don't insist," said Phillip hesitatingly, the un- 
 opened envelope still in his hand. 
 
 Haggleton was waiting, watching breathlessly. The 
 die had been cast. Again he was biding his time. 
 
 Phillip made a movement as if to return the envelope 
 to Gentle, who, with a gesture, refused to take it. 
 
 "Think of your mother, Phillip," implored Mar- 
 garet.
 
 276 THE BATTLE 
 
 Haggleton saw on the young man's face that he had 
 won, even before the words were spoken. 
 
 " My mother is dead," said Phillip softly. " I have 
 a right to think a little of my father." 
 
 " Phillip ! " Margaret's voice was reproachful. 
 Haggleton still maintained his watchful silence. 
 
 " You know I love you, Margaret," the son went 
 on, with wistful tenderness. " Whatever you do, 
 wherever you go, I shall always love you always. 
 I love Gentle, too. He has been a father to me I 
 trust him. He knows the secret of this paper you 
 don't. He can judge, and " with a sudden rush of 
 appeal " let me do my duty, dear, as I feel it ! I 
 must!" 
 
 He went over to the stove, threw the envelope and 
 its secret into the glowing coals, and decided solemnly : 
 
 " We will end this here." 
 
 He watched the flames licking around the edges of 
 the paper, singeing them, and gradually beginning their 
 work of destruction. The others watched him. 
 
 The flames died down, leaving an oblong of black 
 ashes, curling at the corners, rapidly turning to a whit- 
 ish gray. 
 
 Phillip lifted his eyes. Margaret's met them, full of 
 cold determination. 
 
 " I have tried to save you, Phillip," she said sadly, 
 " and I have failed. I am going ! " 
 
 She moved toward the door, but Haggleton's voice 
 stopped her. He had been biding his time, watching 
 for his opportunity, and it had come. He would de- 
 liver the master stroke that would rivet Phillip to him 
 forever, or No, there was no alternative.
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 277 
 
 " Do not go yet, Miss Lawrence," he was saying. 
 " You started this trouble, now you will see it 
 through." 
 
 He stopped a moment, and again, as a moment be- 
 fore, the others looked toward him expectant of what 
 was to follow. 
 
 " It is all very well to burn that statement," he went 
 on with great deliberation, " but you cannot burn the 
 memory of it, Phillip. It would always come between 
 you and me always." 
 
 Again he paused. 
 
 " I am going to tell you what was in that paper," 
 and this time he sounded the note of ultimate decision 
 that many an opponent of his had heeded. The words 
 that followed came one by one, low but clear-cut in 
 utterance : 
 
 " It was an order I wrote over my own signature 
 that an opposition oil refinery should be destroyed." 
 
 Phillip shrank back. 
 
 " My God ! " he exclaimed, " it is a crime. Ah, 
 that is why my mother left you ! " 
 
 He buried his face in his hands, and moved toward 
 Margaret at the closed door. Haggleton pretended 
 not to see the movement and its meaning, but con- 
 tinued in a dispassionate, cool, businesslike voice, in 
 which there was neither apology nor pleading: 
 
 " We were desperate ; our whole business future de- 
 pended on our getting control of the field we had to 
 remove that opposition. We tried to buy them out, 
 we made them generous offers, but that stubborn fool 
 Lawrence " 
 
 Margaret rushed forward.
 
 278 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Stop ! " she cried, " you are speaking of my 
 father." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Haggleton simply. 
 
 The words of his beloved had torn down the last 
 veil that hung between Phillip's eyes and the secret. 
 His mother the crime Margaret! Ah, yes, retribu- 
 tion, and the sins of the fathers ! 
 
 He staggered a little, groping blindly for support. 
 The dream castles of his future lay at his feet in ruins. 
 It was all finished now, for whether he accepted his 
 father's millions or refused them, he would still be his 
 father's son, and Margaret her father's daughter, with 
 that dreadful crime ever lifting its head between them 
 and keeping them apart. 
 
 " Her father," he moaned, " and I am this man's 
 son." 
 
 Haggleton decided swiftly that he must destroy this 
 mood. 
 
 " There is no use making this out worse than it is," 
 he said coldly. " I am sorry for what I did. I will 
 do whatever you think is right in the matter." 
 
 " Whatever I think is right?" asked Phillip in sur- 
 prise. He thought a moment deeply, then asked : 
 
 " How much were you worth when you committed 
 this crime a million half a million ? " 
 
 " Possibly. But what is your idea in asking me 
 that?" 
 
 " I thought," replied Phillip reflectively, " that we 
 might consider some part of your fortune as honestly 
 earned and give back the rest." 
 
 " To whom ? " There was bewilderment in Haggle- 
 ton's voice.
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 279 
 
 " To those who earned it the people." 
 
 " Have you any idea how rich I am? " 
 
 Phillip interrupted him, hardly heeding him. His 
 voice was hard now : 
 
 " You are to keep half a million. The rest you will 
 give back." 
 
 Haggleton's anger flamed up. 
 
 " Do you think that I will do such a crazy thing?" 
 he shouted. 
 
 Phillip remained unmoved. In the same level, com- 
 manding voice he continued : 
 
 " I am not setting myself up as your judge, but I 
 can dispose of my life and decide about my conduct. 
 And I tell you that I will not be known as the con- 
 senting son of a man whose riches have come from a 
 crime. You can keep all your fortune; you need not 
 give back a penny of it, but you cannot have me under 
 the same roof with you ! " 
 
 Haggleton stood speechless for a moment. And so 
 it was defeat at the very moment when he expected 
 victory ! His wife, Gentle, and Margaret had won the 
 day. 
 
 Rage shook him, and for once he gave it free rein. 
 Why curb it since his son had disappointed him ? 
 
 " I thought you a son to be proud of ! " he shouted. 
 " I have worked hard to gain your confidence and af- 
 fection, but you are a prig and a fool ! I came down 
 here and lived with you, I was ready to learn from 
 you, and all that you have taught me is that you are 
 just as ignorant and selfish as all reformers ! " 
 
 " Ignorant ? " Phillip was offended. 
 
 " Selfish ? " Margaret was indignant.
 
 280 THE BATTLE 
 
 The millionaire turned to her. 
 
 " If you were not selfish," he said with ominous 
 calm, " you would follow that boy through anything 
 through weakness, through wickedness. You 
 would stick to him and help him no matter who his 
 father was the worse the father, the closer you would 
 stick to the son." 
 
 He paused a moment, glaring at her. 
 
 " But you are a reformer," he went on, with infinite 
 scorn. " So you quit him at the first trouble. He is 
 tempted by money, and you clear your skirts of him 
 as my wife did of me ! He can go to the devil, if he 
 likes. God, girl ! if that's the way saints love, give me 
 sinners ! " 
 
 " Don't speak to her like that ! " commanded Phillip. 
 
 " No ? Very well, then, I will speak to you. You 
 have had the greatest opportunity a foolish dreamer 
 ever wasted. Go tell your starving tenement friends 
 that John J. Haggleton offered them ten million dol- 
 lars, and you refused it ! " 
 
 He looked around the room, took up his hat, and 
 concluded with a dry laugh in his throat: 
 
 " And this is the end of the experiment ! " 
 
 A change came over him. He had softened during 
 those weeks in looks and bearing and manners under 
 the influence of the experiment and the hope of its re- 
 ward. Now he suddenly became the cold, imperious 
 money king again. He did not look at them as he 
 strode toward the door with the insolence of long 
 supremacy. 
 
 His hand was on the knob, when it was flung open 
 from without.
 
 MORAN FINDS HIS MAN 281 
 
 Moran, half drunk, insane with rage and grief, 
 rushed in, dragging behind him his daughter in her 
 cheap finery, terrified and ghastly under the paint on 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " Now, then," he thundered, " you wait ! I found 
 her in that Tenderloin dive! There is more of your 
 devil's work, Jackson ! " 
 
 "My work?" 
 
 Haggleton spoke distantly, from the top of the social 
 ladder to the bottom. 
 
 His tone infuriated Moran still more. 
 
 " Yes, your work," he insisted threateningly, " the 
 harvest of your bakeshop trusts ! It's your robber sys- 
 tem that crushes men and ruins women it is the 
 Haggleton system ! " 
 
 " You're crazy ! " The same tone of cool contempt, 
 of immeasurable distance. 
 
 " Who made me crazy ? " bellowed Moran, now be- 
 yond all control. " John Haggleton did ! He ruined 
 my little business in the West, he killed my wife in 
 this foul tenement of his! By God! if I had him 
 here, I I would show him." 
 
 Haggleton turned full upon him, glaring. 
 
 " Well, show me," he challenged. " / am Haggle- 
 ton!" 
 
 Moran thrust his hand into his pocket with light- 
 ning quickness. 
 
 " Father ! Look out ! Oh ! " The warning cries 
 came from Jenny, from Phillip, from Margaret, but 
 before Gentle, who stood nearest the half-insane man, 
 could grasp him, the pistol was leveled, flashed, 
 and
 
 282 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Phillip ! My son ! " cried Haggleton, for the 
 young man had flung himself before his father and 
 received the bullet in his chest. 
 
 " My son ! " cried Haggleton again, catching him in 
 his arms and lowering him to the ground. None 
 heeded Moran, whom Gentle had disarmed, and who 
 was cowering against the wall. The old diver, Jenny, 
 and Margaret crowded around the father on his knees 
 over the prostrate form of his son. 
 
 Haggleton looked up at them. 
 
 " This is your gratitude," he said pathetically to 
 Gentle. " He risked his life for me " There was tri- 
 umph in the voice that addressed Margaret. 
 
 " I told you that nothing could keep us apart ; it 
 is the call of the blood! Now he is mine, mine ! I am 
 going to take him home ! " 
 
 His voice broke as he gathered his unconscious son 
 closer in his arms and kissed his forehead: 
 
 " My boy ! My boy ! My little boy ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MARGARET UNVANQUISHED 
 
 THERE followed weeks of pain and anxiety in 
 the great Haggleton mansion in Fifth Avenue. 
 By the wonderful efforts of Grimes and a corps of 
 secretaries the truth was kept from the newspapers; 
 that is, the truth about the shooting and about Hag- 
 gleton's sojourn in a tenement; but there was no 
 hiding the facts themselves. The one supreme fact, 
 that a long-lost son of this multimillionaire had some- 
 how been restored to his father, was not hidden at 
 all ; on the contrary, by Haggleton's orders the widest 
 publicity was given to it. 
 
 As a result there was much speculation and sensa- 
 tional hinting at mysteries within mysteries touching 
 Phillip Ames, this young diver, now announced to the 
 social and financial world as Phillip Haggleton, sole 
 heir to the greatest fortune in America, at present toss- 
 ing on his bed of fever, hanging between life and death, 
 yet gaining slowly. 
 
 Meantime, Phillip was passing through a moral as 
 well as a physical crisis. In his weakness and suffer- 
 ing, in the long restless nights, in his days of increas- 
 ing strength and courage, in every moment of wake- 
 fulness or half wakefulness, there was present before 
 
 283
 
 284 THE BATTLE 
 
 him, vaguely or distinctly, this one thought, that a 
 sudden and tremendous responsibility had been placed 
 upon him. He was no longer an obscure working- 
 man, but a prince of the earth, the son of John J. 
 Haggleton, the only son! Nothing could change this 
 truth, nothing, and its import upon his life and other 
 lives was so urgent and compelling that well, what 
 should he do about it ? What course should he decide 
 upon? Here were dreams of his eager youth in the 
 way of amazing realization. 
 
 And this stern, worldly man, dreaded by thousands, 
 envied by millions, this great lord of taskmasters, 
 here he was, this richest man in America, Phillip's 
 own father, ready and eager to please him with un- 
 told benefactions; to do good instead of evil, to make 
 amends for for the past, as he had vowed in tender, 
 broken words at that tortured bedside, while he waited 
 and hoped that his son's life might be spared him. 
 
 He would tear down Lung Block, or rather Phillip 
 himself could do it in accordance with the most ad- 
 vanced ideas of service to the poor. And he would put 
 aside several millions for immediate steps toward solv- 
 ing that problem, and several millions more for mis- 
 cellaneous charities in which his son might be inter- 
 ested. In short, Phillip would have at least ten 
 millions at his disposal in the campaign of practical 
 reform that he wished to enter upon. Ten million 
 dollars ! 
 
 Margaret, who had accompanied Phillip from Mo- 
 ran's rooms to Haggleton's mansion, and had nursed 
 him with a sort of passionate intensity, became the 
 confidant of his plans and his perplexities in the days
 
 MARGARET UNVANQUISHED 285 
 
 of his convalescence. True to her professional train- 
 ing, she did not disturb her patient by contradiction, 
 but she managed to maintain a certain reserve in 
 their talks, although Phillip always associated her inti- 
 mately with his plans for the future. 
 
 He assumed that the catastrophe had wiped out the 
 past, that the obstacle which had risen between them 
 had been leveled by it, that Margaret was to become 
 his wife after all, and his father's daughter that she 
 had forgiven, if not forgotten, that the offering of 
 atonement made to his mother's memory would be al- 
 lowed to burn on her father's altar as well. 
 
 Her evasive answers when he spoke of their coming 
 marriage worried him a little, but her professional as- 
 sertion that for the present his mind must be set first 
 of all upon his recovery, reassured him in a measure. 
 She was but repeating what the eminent physicians 
 who surrounded the bed of this crown prince of wealth 
 told him daily. She assured him frankly and truth- 
 fully that she still loved him, but here her assurances 
 stopped. The time to tell him the full truth would not 
 come until he left his bed and her task as his nurse was 
 ended. 
 
 Her mind was fully made up. No, she could not 
 bring herself to marry the son of a man who had de- 
 stroyed, and, in a way, disgraced her father. With 
 all the force of her soul she hated the name of Haggle- 
 ton and she could not bring herself to bear it. 
 
 She loved Phillip, loved him in spite of this hateful 
 relationship ; she would have married him joyfully as 
 Phillip Ames, a man of the people, she would have 
 married him in poverty, in obscurity, in sickness, in
 
 286 THE BATTLE 
 
 anything except his present state that was the only 
 thing she could not and would not share with him. 
 
 It was sad for both of them, terribly sad. She had 
 tortured her mind to find some issue from the diffi- 
 culty, but could find none. So there was nothing more 
 to say; she could not marry him. Yes, it was God 
 bless you, and good-by, for she no longer dreamed of 
 winning him away from his new allegiance. That bat- 
 tle had been lost ! 
 
 Her relations with the millionaire were peculiar and 
 difficult. He tactfully evaded her and spoke to her 
 as little as possible. He knew that his presence must 
 be disagreeable to her, that it evoked the bitterest 
 memories of her life, and yet it was unavoidable that 
 time and again they should stand side by side watch- 
 ing over the patient in moments when the fever rose 
 and his chances of recovery seemed doubtful. 
 
 It was then that they listened together to his de- 
 lirious mutterings, in which his love for her, his ad- 
 miration and affection for him, his reverence for his 
 mother's memory, his perplexity over the wrong com- 
 mitted, were intermingled and confused. 
 
 They shared each other's anxiety, there grew up be- 
 tween them the bond of hopes and fears, until, disci- 
 pline herself as she would, Margaret could not keep 
 herself from feeling a profound sympathy for this 
 man of iron as she came to understand the softer, the 
 better side of his nature, parched by long years of 
 loneliness, now pouring forth a rushing stream of un- 
 selfish, generous love in the possession of its natural 
 object his son! 
 
 She began to like him, to admire the unvarying
 
 MARGARET UNVANQUISHED 287 
 
 readiness of resource, the determination and efficiency 
 that always were at his service in the sick room, as they 
 had been in the marts of men and in Moran's tene- 
 ment. 
 
 Often, too, she was present, at Phillip's urgent re- 
 quest, at the talks between father and son concerning 
 the son's plans for his benefactions to the poor. Then 
 she could not withhold her admiration from the master 
 mind that had probed so deeply and seen so clearly in 
 so short a time. Haggleton's organizing genius here 
 shone forth. It demonstrated to her the practical su- 
 periority of the economical philanthropy of brain over 
 the sentimental philanthropy of the heart. She learned 
 to rely on Haggleton's judgment; his ideas on the 
 subject imperceptibly but steadily reformed hers. 
 
 Haggleton was fighting his final battle. He had 
 conquered Phillip, Gentle, Joe Caffrey, Jenny Moran, 
 even, repentant in his cell awaiting trial. Now he was 
 seeking to conquer Margaret, and, as in all these other 
 conquests, not for himself, but for his son. 
 
 But Margaret steeled her heart. Her resolution re- 
 mained unshaken, even though it was no longer the 
 stronger impulse of her divided feelings, but the re- 
 sult of an effort of the will. 
 
 Gentle had long since surrendered to the enemy, 
 gone over to his camp, bag and baggage, his almoner 
 already, marveling every day at the way Haggleton 
 had of making every one of his preliminary gifts to the 
 poor yield its hundred per cent of benefit. 
 
 Jenny had been provided for. Haggleton had seen 
 to this, too. The girl must work out her own salvation, 
 but, unknown to her, the roughness of the path had
 
 288 THE BATTLE 
 
 been smoothed sufficiently to make the rocks stepping- 
 stones, not points of disaster. 
 
 And the bakery trust, forgotten now, flourished. It 
 was selling better bread and cheaper bread to the 
 whole East Side. Joe Caffrey had found himself there. 
 He was in temporary charge of the offices in Moran's 
 transformed rooms. "If you want to make a lazy man 
 hustle, give him a job bossing somebody else," Hag- 
 gleton had said laughingly to Gentle. 
 
 Thus three weeks passed, weeks of diminishing anx- 
 iety. Phillip had been declared out of danger, and 
 was to make his first appearance at the dinner table 
 that night. Margaret's service as a nurse had come 
 to an end. She must make her final choice. 
 
 Haggleton left her alone with him, in his usual 
 mental attitude of preparedness for whatever might 
 happen, hoping that he had won her for Phillip, and 
 Phillip for himself. 
 
 The rumors about the whole affair had grown so 
 thick that he had resolved to take the public into his 
 confidence to a certain, well-calculated extent, and he 
 had sent, not for the reporters of the daily press, but 
 for James Langston, a writer for high-class monthly 
 magazines, a sound student of the problems of poverty, 
 whose signature carried the greatest weight. He re- 
 ceived this influential personage in his library, and told 
 him, in Gentle's presence, the main facts of his experi- 
 ence, giving him permission to make whatever use of 
 them he chose in the New England Review. 
 
 But Langston was a master interviewer, who ever 
 probed beyond the facts themselves for their deeper 
 meaning, and he was a psychologist.
 
 MARGARET UNVANQUISHED 289 
 
 So, when Haggleton had made his statement, and 
 added, "I think that's about everything," Langston 
 said determinedly: 
 
 "Excuse me, Mr. Haggleton there is another 
 point. You have given me the facts, but I would like 
 to get their significance. The New England Review 
 is a serious magazine." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " It is nearly a month since the shooting occurred," 
 continued Langston. " You have had time, and Mr. 
 Gentle, here, too, to study the lesson of this tenement 
 experience. That's what I want to present, the lesson 
 of it." 
 
 " The lesson ? " Haggleton waited a moment. " I 
 haven't thought of any lesson," he explained. " I 
 have been sitting at the bedside of my boy, and 
 thank God, he has pulled through ! " 
 
 " I understand your feelings, but the press said 
 you went down there to prove certain things." 
 
 " I went down there to get my son." 
 
 " Yes, but may I ask how you got him ? Did he 
 convince you, or did you convince him ? " 
 
 " When you have love, Mr. Langston, there is no 
 need of argument." 
 
 " But can't you be more specific, Mr. Haggleton ? 
 Have you no message for the muck-rakers ? " 
 
 The millionaire got up and spoke with ready author- 
 ity. Yes, he had something to say on that subject : 
 
 " Tell them to stop their snarling. Let them preach 
 the gospel of hope. It isn't sneers and whining that 
 our young men need. It's courage and self-denial and 
 brains. Nothing can keep a man down if he'll work
 
 2QO THE BATTLE 
 
 and wait and deny himself. Nothing ! He'll drive out 
 the incompetent man who bosses him just as surely 
 as freezing water splits a rock. Tell your readers 
 that!" 
 
 " Then it's a lesson of courage and self-denial ? " 
 
 " And hope." 
 
 Langston had got what he was in search of. He 
 always did. Now he rose, took his leave, and left 
 the library. 
 
 Haggleton turned to the large picture of his wife 
 and their infant son over the mantelpiece and looked 
 at it. 
 
 " This man congratulates me on recovering my son," 
 he said sadly ; " how little he knows ! " 
 
 " You have recovered your son, Mr. Haggleton," 
 Gentle answered with reassuring conviction. " Phillip 
 answered the call of the blood, as you said he would. 
 He loves you." 
 
 " Yes, he loves me. That's the great, precious fact 
 my boy loves me. But he loves this girl, too, and 
 she won't change. I have watched her all these weeks 
 while she has been nursing Phillip. The doctor says 
 that he owes his life to her devotion, but no, she 
 won't change, she can't forget." 
 
 " She can forgive." 
 
 " I doubt it, and I don't blame her. I like her. 
 She has narrow ideas, but she holds to them hard ! 
 I'd rather have a person strongly wrong than weakly 
 right." 
 
 " She will never leave Phillip now," persisted Gentle. 
 
 " Suppose she makes Phillip leave me ? " 
 
 " It's inconceivable ! "
 
 MARGARET UNVANQUISHED 291 
 
 " Nothing is inconceivable, Mr. Gentle, when a good 
 woman thinks that she is fighting a bad man. A con- 
 scientious woman has no scruples." 
 
 " At any rate, she must speak out soon." 
 
 " Yes," he said, " her work is finished. Phillip is to 
 join us at dinner to-night. My boy ! At my table ! " 
 
 A servant entered. 
 
 " There's a person asking to see you, sir," he an- 
 nounced. " He says his name is Joe Caffrey." 
 
 "Is he alone?" 
 
 " No, sir. There is another person with him, a 
 woman." 
 
 " It's Jenny," said Gentle in an undertone. " They 
 want to plead for Moran, I guess. His case conies up 
 next week." 
 
 " Show them both in," ordered Haggleton. The 
 servant bowed and withdrew. 
 
 " How was Moran when you last saw him in the 
 Tombs ? " asked the millionaire of the old diver, who 
 answered : 
 
 " Sincerely sorry for what he did. When I told 
 him what you have done for Jenny, he broke down." 
 
 " I'll see that he is dealt with leniently. After all, 
 his mad act was prompted by a father's love, like 
 mine." 
 
 The servant opened the door again and admitted 
 Joe Caffrey, followed timidly by Jenny.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE BATTLE WON 
 
 JOE was gorgeously attired, according to his own 
 ideas. He wore a brown suit with large and loud 
 checks green and yellow and red a blue-striped 
 shirt, a green knotted silk tie with a flashing scarf pin, 
 and a green Tyrolean hat, which for the moment he 
 held respectfully in his hand. His face shone and 
 glowed with the painful effects of a severe shave ; his 
 glistening hair was " slicked down " with all the in- 
 judicious thoroughness of the Bowery barber shop. 
 
 Jenny was neatly dressed in black, and kept her 
 eyes cast down. Haggleton was again struck by her 
 beauty and her innate good taste of manner. 
 
 Joe felt the assurance which he had expected his 
 attire would give him oozing out of his shining shoes 
 as he gazed around him at the dignified magnificence 
 of the library. 
 
 " Gee ! " he exclaimed involuntarily, " this is a 
 swell shop ! " 
 
 " Good evening, Jenny," said Haggleton kindly. 
 " How are you, Joe ? " 
 
 " I'm all right, Mr. Jackson Mr. Haggleton, I 
 mean." 
 
 Joe had something serious to say, and determined 
 to get it off his mind as soon as possible. He glanced 
 at Jenny and said : 
 
 292
 
 THE BATTLE WON 293 
 
 " Say, Mr. Haggleton, Jenny's got something to say 
 to you. It's important. That's why we've come. 
 Soon's she told me I had an intuition." 
 
 The millionaire turned to the girl. 
 
 "Well, Jenny?" 
 
 His voice was very gentle. Jenny gave him a shy 
 glance of gratitude. 
 
 " You have been very kind to me, Mr. Haggleton," 
 she began diffidently, " and and I would rather tell 
 you alone." 
 
 Gentle got up. 
 
 " Come along, Joe," he said, carrying the young 
 man with him. 
 
 When he was alone with the girl the millionaire 
 repeated his question. 
 
 "Well, Jenny?" 
 
 " You know, Mr. Haggleton, I told you, after my 
 husband was killed he left me with a little baby and 
 no money. So I had to go out as wet nurse. I sent 
 my child, my beautiful baby girl, to a baby farm, and 
 she died. They always do." 
 
 " I am afraid so." 
 
 " I was all alone, and so lonely in that beautiful 
 house, and he Mr. Lawrence " 
 
 " Yes, Jenny. I know it all. You told me." 
 
 Haggleton was beginning to be interested. He 
 thought he saw the direction of Jenny's thought. She 
 suddenly plucked up courage. 
 
 " I can prove it all," she announced triumphantly. 
 " I have his letters here." 
 
 Haggleton had often thought of this skeleton in the 
 family closet of the unsuspecting Margaret when she
 
 294 THE BATTLE 
 
 had Betrayed more plainly than usually her youthful 
 contempt for the weaknesses and stumblings of poor 
 human nature. But of these letters he had known noth- 
 ing. So there were incriminating documents in the 
 house of Lawrence as well as in that of Haggleton! 
 Well, well! 
 
 Jenny held out the package of letters to him. 
 
 " Do you want them ? " she said impulsively. 
 
 He saw her meaning plainly now, but refused to 
 play this card thus unexpectedly put into his hands at 
 the critical moment. 
 
 " Why should I take these letters ? " he asked. 
 
 Jenny took the plunge in desperation. 
 
 " I know more than you think, Mr. Haggleton," 
 she announced. " I watched that girl, Miss Lawrence. 
 She is proud, she looks down on you, and these let- 
 ters would help." 
 
 " Help what ? They would make her unhappy." 
 
 " Why shouldn't she be unhappy ? She makes 
 others unhappy ! " the girl burst out bitterly. " I am 
 unhappy." 
 
 " So am I unhappy," said the millionaire simply ; 
 " but, Jenny," he continued gravely, " you can't get 
 happiness for yourself by taking it away from some- 
 body else. You don't want to hurt Phil ? " 
 
 "No! No! Indeed, not!" 
 
 " Then forget all this. Make a clean start. You 
 have a chance, have you not ? " 
 
 " Yes, you have given me a chance." 
 
 Again that look of gratitude, of unselfish devotion 
 in Jenny's dark eyes. And now her better nature won, 
 as it always did when an appeal was made to it.
 
 THE BATTLE WON 295 
 
 " Yes, I see," she said with frank contrition. " It's 
 wrong! Joe suggested it. I will destroy the letters. 
 No ! You destroy them ! " 
 
 She laid the package on the table before him. 
 
 " All right," he said, " I will burn them." 
 
 He took her hand and led her to the door. 
 
 " Good night, Jenny, and good luck to you. You 
 will find Joe at the end of the hall, and can go out with 
 him." 
 
 " If you don't mind, sir," she stammered, " tell Phil 
 that I wish him luck. Good night ! " 
 
 She was gone. 
 
 Haggleton returned to the table, took up the pack- 
 age of letters, and looked at it passively. Here was 
 his last trump! He knew it. He had already won 
 all along the line, but at what cost! His victory, his 
 gain, his happiness must be bought at the price of his 
 son's loss of what he held most dear. Phillip had 
 found his father, but he could only hold him by re- 
 nouncing the woman who had promised to be his wife, 
 or, to win her again, he must give up his father. 
 
 Haggleton stirred impatiently. Why could not 
 Margaret be a little reasonable, a little more human? 
 Why did wisdom come so late in life ? 
 
 These letters might prove to her that she had no 
 right to judge and condemn Phillip's father they 
 would lower her pride, teach her tolerance and under- 
 standing and charity. But then it would make her 
 unhappy, and, should Phillip ever know 
 
 She had not scrupled to fight him with such a 
 weapon. He would not stoop to her level. 
 
 But in that case Phillip would pay the price! He
 
 296 THE BATTLE 
 
 must make his choice between two sacrifices his 
 father or his love. The vicious circle could not be 
 broken. 
 
 Haggleton weighed the package in his hands, pon- 
 dering. Gradually the cloud passed from his face, a 
 light came into his eyes. He had found the way ! 
 
 Phillip should not suffer. It was he, Haggleton, 
 who would renounce. The road lay clear before him 
 now. 
 
 He had learned to do his loving himself! 
 
 He approached the open fire in the huge fireplace, 
 but before he could thrust into its glow the compro- 
 mising letters, Margaret and Gentle entered. He 
 hastily placed the package on the mantelpiece, and 
 faced around interrogatively. 
 
 Margaret was in street costume, her hat pinned on, 
 her veil lifted to the tip of her nose. She was nerv- 
 ously drawing on her gloves. 
 
 " Good evening," said Haggleton. " Are you going 
 out, Miss Lawrence ? " 
 
 " Miss Lawrence is leaving us," said Gentle. His 
 voice was grieved and disapproving. 
 
 " You are leaving us for good ? " Haggleton asked 
 in a level, inexpressive tone. 
 
 " Yes er I my work here is done." 
 
 She looked at him with more of apology than of 
 defiance or judgment. 
 
 " Don't judge me too severely," she added ; " I have 
 fought so hard all these weeks at Phillip's bedside to 
 hold to my duty." 
 
 Haggleton ignored this. He went straight to the 
 point :
 
 THE BATTLE WON 297 
 
 " You are not going to marry Phillip? " 
 
 " No ! You and he are pne flesh, as you said your- 
 self. I have no right to come between you." 
 
 " But you love him still ? " 
 
 " I love him more ! " 
 
 The avowal was made with almost painful intensity. 
 Haggleton looked at her a moment, wondering at the 
 way many people have of believing self-inflicted and 
 unnecessary pain the highest form of morality. He 
 decided to make an appeal to the love she had just 
 confessed : 
 
 " This will be a great shock to Phillip. It may set 
 back his recovery." 
 
 The girl saw his intent. Her face grew cold and 
 obstinate. 
 
 " He is quite well," she answered in her professional 
 tone, " and he is a man." 
 
 " Listen to me." 
 
 The simple words again had that unfailing effect of 
 commanding attention. Gentle bent forward, but Mar- 
 garet steeled herself. 
 
 " There is nothing you can say," she announced, 
 " that I have not said to myself. It's no use. I can- 
 not change." 
 
 Haggleton walked slowly to the mantelpiece and 
 took up the package of letters. 
 
 " No," he said, half aloud, as if to himself, " you 
 cannot change." 
 
 She loved Phillip, oh, yes, he reflected, but she loved 
 her grievance more, and most of all her conception 
 of her own superior righteousness, her fancied right 
 to sit in judgment
 
 298 THE BATTLE 
 
 He stood there near the fire, its glow ruddying his 
 strong, pale face. He looked tired and old, but in his 
 eyes shone a great light. 
 
 Margaret took a step toward the door. She was 
 determined to end this painful interview. 
 
 " I cannot live under this roof," she announced with 
 an air of finality " under the same roof with the man 
 who ruined my father." 
 
 " It is bad business ruining another person, eh ? " 
 asked Haggleton in a curious tone of voice. 
 
 He looked again at the bundle in his hands, then 
 turned and threw it into the fire, watching the flames 
 leap up around it, as if anxious to destroy its con- 
 demning evidence. 
 
 Margaret watched him anxiously. What were those 
 papers why did he destroy them now ? 
 
 " Well," announced the millionaire, lifting his 
 bowed head and squaring his drooping shoulders, 
 " I will get my son. You renounce him, you do 
 not even offer him his choice, but, as you say, he 
 is a man." 
 
 He went to the door, passing Margaret without 
 looking at her. With his hand on the knob he turned 
 and added: 
 
 " Whatever happens, I want you two to know that 
 I have had more happiness in the last few weeks, since 
 that shot was fired, than in all the rest of my life put 
 together. I have had my son for six weeks ! " 
 
 He went out, softly closing the door behind him. 
 
 " It's all right, is it not, Margaret ? " pleaded Gen- 
 tle; "you are not going away? " 
 
 " Yes, I am, I must."
 
 THE BATTLE WON 299 
 
 " You can't be indifferent to such a sincere repent- 
 ance? You can't resist such love or such pain? 
 Look ! Have you the heart " 
 
 The door opened again and Phillip entered, 
 pale, weak, listless, his slow steps supported by his 
 father. 
 
 " He knows now that your decision cannot be 
 shaken," said Haggleton to Margaret. " It was best 
 that his father should tell him." 
 
 " Margaret ! " implored Phillip from the chair into 
 which he had sunk, exhausted. 
 
 " Phillip ! " 
 
 There was agony in her voice as she sank down 
 on her knees beside him, clasping his hands and lean- 
 ing her forehead against his arm. 
 
 " Wait ! " 
 
 Haggleton spoke again in that curiously level, 
 enigmatic, commanding tone of his. Phillip looked at 
 him wearily. Margaret, still beside him, lifted her 
 head. Gentle again was all attention. 
 
 " I am not going to argue or plead," announced 
 the millionaire, " I am going to yield. I have done 
 wrong I have got to suffer. That's the eternal law! 
 Well, I will suffer." 
 
 " No ! " cried Phillip, Margaret forgotten for the 
 moment. 
 
 " My son, I have only a few more years before me. 
 You have a lifetime before you with her. You have 
 the best thing in the world, as I had once, the love of 
 a good woman." 
 
 He turned toward the picture of his wife and 
 looked at it, then continued:
 
 300 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Don't lose that love, my boy, as I did. Don't let 
 anything part you from it, not even your father ! " 
 
 A tense silence fell upon the room. It lasted until 
 it became almost unendurable. The level voice con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " You must go with her. It is I who must renounce. 
 It is my wish. And we can see each other once in 
 a while." 
 
 With a still, trembling little smile, he asked of Mar- 
 garet : 
 
 " It won't hurt him to see his father once in a while, 
 will it?" 
 
 Margaret rose to her feet precipitately. Her pride 
 was broken, her enmity dissipated. A realization of 
 the grandeur and dignity of this sacrifice, so simply 
 proffered, overwhelmed her, and filled her heart with 
 humility and contrition and love and the impulse of 
 atonement 
 
 "I can't do it!" she cried. "I am not going! I 
 love you, too ! " 
 
 The three were in each other's arms. Gentle turned 
 away deeply moved. 
 
 Thus they stood for a long while, in silent realiza- 
 tion of their happiness, found at last. 
 
 " My daughter ! My son ! " 
 
 Haggleton's voice trembled, but he steadied it with 
 an effort to say: 
 
 " I will devote the rest of my life to business don't 
 look astonished the business of making you happy. 
 And we will make the poor happy, too, if that will 
 make you happier. See here, I am going to put ten 
 million dollars aside for you three for my son, my
 
 THE BATTLE WON 301 
 
 daughter, and our good friend Gentle. You shall be 
 custodians." 
 
 He looked from one to the other, and smiled whim- 
 sically as he went on : 
 
 " I may give you a little ahem ! advice from time 
 to time, but, in the main, I want you to swing the thing 
 yourselves. You have spent a good many years study- 
 ing these problems of poverty, and doubtless know 
 the very best plan to follow." 
 
 A twinkle came into his eyes as he asked : 
 
 " Now, what scheme would you propose to utilize 
 ten million dollars in helping the poor of this city 
 without demoralizing them ? It's up to you ! " 
 
 " Ten million dollars ! " speculated Gentle. " We 
 could cover this island with model tenements ! " 
 
 " Cover the island ! " cried Phillip. " We could build 
 about fifty! And they would never pay. We would 
 waste our millions ! " 
 
 Haggleton was watching them, the twinkle still in 
 his eyes. Something he had anticipated was amusing 
 him. 
 
 " Well, then, what would you suggest ? " Gentle 
 was asking of Phillip, with just a little heat in the tone 
 of his voice. 
 
 " I'd suggest homes for consumptives ! " The an- 
 swer came with unhesitating promptness. " That's 
 what the city needs." 
 
 " I don't agree with you," Margaret now broke in 
 firmly. " We do not want homes for consumptives, we 
 must build homes to prevent consumption. We must 
 think of the next generation, we must help the poor 
 children, we must give them sunshine, green fields "
 
 302 THE BATTLE 
 
 " Impossible ! " Phillip pointed out. " You can't take 
 them away from their parents." 
 
 " Let the parents go, too ! " 
 
 " No, no, the parents have to work ! " and " No, no, 
 that would pauperize them ! " cried Phillip and Gentle 
 at the same time. 
 
 "I never thought of that!" confessed the girl in 
 bewilderment. 
 
 Haggleton was smiling now. He was enjoying him- 
 self hugely. 
 
 " Well, what is it to be? " he asked. " You three 
 have been studying the problem for years, you now 
 have all the money you want, and the first thing you 
 do is to condemn each other's plans ! " 
 
 And here he received the greatest tribute that had 
 ever been paid him in his wonderful career. These 
 three reformers, so sure of themselves, turned to him 
 with implicit reliance upon his talent for organization, 
 his genius for leadership, and without a doubt of his 
 ability to solve their problem for them, asked, as if 
 with one voice: 
 
 "What would you do?" 
 
 The millionaire went to the library table, unlocked 
 one of its drawers, took from it a bundle of blue prints 
 and typewritten papers, and spread them out before 
 them. 
 
 " It is the easiest way in the world," he began delib- 
 erately. " There's only one sound, practical, common- 
 sense way to help the poor of New York City with- 
 out demoralizing them and this is the way you 
 showed it to me," he turned to Phillip with eyes full 
 of tenderness, " and now I'm going to show you the
 
 THE BATTLE WON 303 
 
 application of your own wisdom you've got to do 
 your loving yourself there's the answer." 
 
 They were seated at the table now, Margaret be- 
 tween Phillip and his father, her head leaning against 
 the shoulder of the one, her hand holding that of the 
 other. Gentle, at Haggleton's right, was beaming with 
 contentment. 
 
 They were examining plans, reading memoranda, 
 commenting, discussing, asking questions, and receiv- 
 ing prompt, clear replies. 
 
 Haggleton was happy. 
 
 He had taught many lessons, but had learned one 
 far greater than all those he had given. 
 
 He had learned to do his loving himself. 
 
 The battle was won. 
 
 THE END
 
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