Rose MacLeod

								

glow, whatever it might be, the marsh-lamp or star. Osmond shook his
head.
"I don't know, Pete," he owned. "I don't know. I'm out of the world. I
read a lot, but that's not the same thing as having it out with men. But
I feel a distinct conviction that it's every man's business to mind his
own business."
"You wouldn't have us speak? You wouldn't have him, Markham MacLeod?"
The boy's impetuousness made denial seem like warfare. Osmond put it
aside with his hand.
"Don't," he said. "You make me feel like Capital. I'm Labor, lad. I
always have been."
"Isn't it anything to move a thousand men like one? To say a word and
bring on a strike of ten thousand? The big chieftains never did so much
as that. Alexander wasn't in it. Napoleon wasn't. It's colossal."
"I don't know whether it seems to me very clever to bring on a strike,"
said Osmond. "It would seem to me a great triumph to make ten thousand
men feel justly. Resistance isn't the greatest thing to me. I should
want to know whether it was noble to resist."
"Ah, but it is noble! Resistance--for themselves, their children, their
children's children."
Osmond was looking away at the horizon, a whimsical smile coming about
the corners of his mouth.
"Yes, Pete," he said. "But you paint your pictures."
"Now you own I'm right! Isn't it anything to move ten thousand men to
throw down their tools and go on strike?"
"Well, by thunder!" Osmond had awakened. "Now you put it that way, I
don't know whether it is or not. That phrase undid you. Lay down their
tools? Show me the man that makes me take up my tools in reverence and
sobriety, because good work is good religion. That's what I'd like."
"But it means something,--starvation, maybe, death. You don't recognize
it, do you? You won't recognize the war that's on--oh, it is
on!--between Capital and Labor, between the high places and the low.
It's war, and it's got to be fought out."
"I do recognize it, lad." He spoke gently, thinking of his own lot, and
the hard way through which he had come to his almost fevered
championship of whatever was maimed or hurt. "Only, Pete, do you know
what your opposing forces need? They need grannie."
"To say it's the will of God?"
"To be wheeled out in her chair, and sit at the head of your armies and
say, 'Love God. Love one another.' If they love God, they'll listen to
Him. If they love one another your strikes will end to-morrow, and your
rich man will break bread with your poor one, and your poor one will
lose hatred for the rich. You need grandmother."
They sat smiling over it. Peter had amazingly cooled. He rose to his
feet.
"Well," he said, "I'll paint some pictures. Of course I'll paint my
pictures--sometime. There's the Brotherhood again. Don't I want to turn
in shekels? Don't I want to have it known that such weight as my name
carries is going in there?"
It was Osmond's turn to rage. He, too, rose, and they confronted each