When Helen returned to her home in the early evening, she found her father in a state of mind bordering on insanity.
Striding here and there about the rooms with uncontrollable nervous energy, he roared, as he always did on such occasions, about his sole ownership of the Mill--the legality of the patents that gave him possession of the new process--how it was his genius and hard work alone that had built up the Mill--that no one should take his possessions from him--waving his arms and shaking his fists in violent, meaningless gestures. With his face twitching and working and his eyes blazing with excitement and rage, his voice rose almost to a scream: "Let them try to take anything away from me! I know what they are going to do, but they can't do it. I've had the best lawyers that I could hire and I've got it all tied up so tight that no one can touch it.
"I could have thrown Pete Martin out of the Mill any time I wanted. He has no claim on me that any court in the world would recognize. Let him try anything he dares. I'll starve him to death--I'll turn him into the streets--he hasn't a thing in the world that he didn't get by working for me. I made him--I will ruin him. You all think that I am sick--you think that I am crazy--that I don't know what I am talking about. I'll show you--you'll see what will happen if they start any thing--"
The piteous exhibition ended as usual. As if driven by some invisible fiend, the man rushed from the presence of those whom he most loved to the dreadful company of his own fearful and monstrous thoughts.
And the room where the wife and children of Adam Ward sat was filled with the presence of that hidden thing of which they dared not speak.
Everywhere throughout the city the people were discussing John Ward's opposition to McIver.
The community, tense with feeling, waited for an answer to the vital question, What would the Mill workers' union do? Upon the answer of John Ward's employees to the demands of the agitator for a sympathetic strike depended the success or failure of Jake Vodell's Millsburgh campaign.
It was evening. The Interpreter was sitting in his wheel chair on the balcony porch with silent Billy not far away. Beyond the hills on the west the sky was faintly glowing in the last of the sun's light. The Flats were deep in gloomy shadows out of which the grim stacks of the Mill rose toward the smoky darkness of their overhanging cloud. Here and there among the poor homes of the workers a lighted window or a lonely street lamp shone in the murky dusk. But the lights of the business section of the city gleamed and sparkled like clusters and strings of jewels, while the residence districts on the hillside were marked by hundreds of twinkling, starlike points.