man's sudden, half-veiled smile, it was perfectly obvious that he knew that he did not. He turned suddenly from Roger with a faint gesture of his long hand that seemed to sweep that young man totally out of the discussion.

Then Judith, offended, although Roger himself was hardly conscious of the rebuff, spoke for him.

"Yes," she said with deliberate coldness. "We know all about it. But what of it?"

"Simply this, Miss Wynrod," said Good crisply, and with a hint of hostility in his manner. "You are a large stockholder in several of the Algoma mines. The blood of those murdered miners is on your head—and those innocent women and children burned to death by your hirelings. Whether you know it or not, you have a responsibility for the situation, and I have come here to-day to find out what you are going to do about it all?"

"Do about it?" cried Judith, amazed by the suddenness of his attack. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

The stranger's mood softened and his voice became quieter.

"I want to find out what you think about things—things in general—what you are going to do with the great wealth which is yours, what part you are going to play in the changing world. This business at Algoma—that's only a part of the whole. I want to find out what—well—what you really are?"

Judith could have laughed aloud at the irony of the question which this uncouth stranger was putting to her. It was, almost to the words, the same question she had put to her brother not half an hour before. What did she think about things? Why were people suddenly so interested in what other people thought?

But the similarity was not apparent to Roger. The question caused him no introspection: only anger.

"What right have you to put such impudent questions to us, anyway," he demanded hotly. "Who the devil are you to intrude on us in this fashion? You'd best get out before I have you put out."

The tall man made no move to rise from his chair as Roger stood threateningly above him. He merely turned his hands up in a quaint gesture of deprecation.

"Bless your heart, young chap, I'm not putting any questions. If you'll glance at my card, you'll notice that my business comes before my name. I'm simply the spokesman of a newspaper ..."

"Newspaper!" sneered Roger. "Do you call that anarchist rag a newspaper?"

But the other man refused to be interrupted. He proceeded equably. "And that newspaper, in turn, is simply the spokesman of the public. It's the public that wants to know who you are—and what you are—not I. Personally, to be quite candid, I don't care a farthing. But ..."

"Well, and what right has the public to come prying into our private affairs?" interrupted Roger again. "It's none of their business. This is supposed to be a free country. Why don't you give law-abiding private citizens a little freedom and privacy? You force your way in where you aren't wanted and insult us and then say it's because the public wants to know. What business is it of the public's what we do and what we think?"

The stranger smiled benignly.

"My dear young man," he said calmly, as he folded up his newspaper and fitted it into his pocket. "That's old, old stuff. You're 'way behind the times. That rode into the discard on the tumbrels of the Revolution. As an individual, nobody cares a rap about you. As the possessor of a great fortune, the public is very keenly interested in your lightest thought. But I'm not going to attempt to give you a lesson in elementary history. Your sister can, I am sure, do that for me."

He turned to her with the same galling indifference that had so offended Roger before. She could not but admire the assurance of his manner in the face of such open hostility.

"Miss Wynrod," he went on calmly, "I do hope you will talk to me frankly. Won't you tell me what you honestly think of your relations, first to this business at Algoma, and then ..."

"Don't say a word," interrupted Roger. "Remember the sheet he represents."

Judith did remember, and the recollection made her angry. She smarted still at the cartoons and denunciatory editorials in which she had so frequently been singled out for attack.

"Don't you think it's just a little curious, Mr. Good," she asked quietly, "that you should come to me in this way when you must know how your own paper has treated me?"

A pained expression crossed his eyes.

"It is a little queer," he admitted. "And honestly I don't like the roasts they give you any better than you do. But don't you see that in a way you're responsible for them? You never come back. You just hide. People don't know what you think. All they see is the results—what you do—or what they think you do ... and that amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? Now if you'd just discuss the Algoma situation, and give me some idea of what you think its causes are, and what part you think you ought to play in making things better, it'll go a long way toward making the public understand you better and sympathise with you. They think that life's a rose garden to you, you know. They never dream that you have troubles, too. You never tell them. All you show is the contented side of your life, the luxury, the pleasure, the idleness. Why not take them into your confidence?"

Of the shabby stranger's earnestness there could be no doubt. His long arms waved and the perspiration welled out on his cheeks as he strove to present his arguments. At intervals Roger sneered audibly, though Judith listened attentively. But when he paused for breath, she shook her head.

"I sympathise with your point of view," she said with an effort at finality. "But I have nothing to say."

But he refused to be put off. "But Miss Wynrod, can't you see what an opportunity I'm giving? Here's a chance for you to set yourself right with the people. They think you live for nothing but money. They think you could fix everything up into an imitation of Heaven if you only weren't greedy. Why don't you show them that you are doing all you can, that you're thinking about things, that you're not the heartless, selfish, narrow, stupid creature they think you are. This is an opportunity to make yourself loved instead of hated. Why, Miss Wynrod, if you'll make a statement, I'll bring the proofs to you to correct. I won't put a comma in that you don't want. Wouldn't that be better than to go back and write a story and say that when I asked you what you thought about the burning to death of twenty-two women and children in one of your own mines, by your own hirelings, you replied that you had nothing to say?"

Roger was speechless with wrath at this torrent of what he thought was abuse, failing to distinguish between the general and the specific. It was only by an effort of will that he restrained himself from laying violent hands on this threadbare creature with the eloquent tongue, who, it appeared to him, was deliberately insulting his sister. But Judith herself felt no rancour. Indeed she felt the magnetism of the reporter more strongly with each word, and it never occurred to impugn the sincerity of his outburst—nor its justice. Her face struggled painfully in an effort to be cold and impassive as she barely whispered again her refusal to speak.

Good studied her for a moment. Then he smiled, quite cheerfully. All his hot tensity vanished suddenly.

"I think I understand," he said quietly. "It isn't that you won't talk to me—but you can't. You can't tell me what you think about these things—because you haven't thought about them. But you're going to, Miss Wynrod, you're going to. Some day I shall come back, and then you will talk to me. Perhaps you will even ask me to come back."

Roger laughed at that, but Judith was silent. She had a curious and not at all pleasant sense that this curious, contradictory, talkative stranger, with his grotesque form and clothes, and bad manners, not to say impudence, knew her better than she knew herself. He was perfectly right. She tried to