Minton was largely a manufacturing town, and Roland soon found that there were many wrongs around him calling for redress. His investigations speedily brought him into contact with leaders of the "Knights of Labor," and sympathy with their aims very soon led him to enroll himself in their ranks. He could not, indeed, remain a member after he should become a legal practitioner, as the rules of the order do not admit lawyers; but he could and would work with heart and soul for its objects, both in the ranks and outside them. He found the leaders cordially grateful for his aid and counsel, and in the sympathy and coöperation of some of the more intelligent workingmen he found much of the pleasure and stimulus of his new life. Of course, his efforts on their behalf sometimes evoked, from the "party of the other part," sentiments of a very different character; but Roland was happily so constituted as to care little for that; and, so long as he could carry a point for the benefit of his friends, the employés, he could bear hard names with great equanimity. So absorbed was he, indeed, in his ideals and enthusiasms, that the "personal equation" had become very insignificant.
He found, however, that, in order to rouse the public mind on certain points, he wanted an opportunity for stronger expression than he could venture to use in his editorials in the Minerva, which, of course would not risk irretrievably offending its wealthy patrons. The editor, who was in part proprietor, was by no means uninterested in the "labor question," and was quite willing to go as far as he thought "safe" in its interests. But Roland wanted more liberty of speech for the burning thoughts that filled his breast; and the idea gradually took shape, in the course of their discussions in the sanctum, of issuing a small weekly journal to be devoted entirely to the object nearest to Roland's heart, his friend the editor being willing to afford all the facilities of the printing-office to the new journal, and even to bear part of the expense, which was also to be shared by an eccentric old Scotchman who boarded in the same house with Roland, and with whom he had struck up an odd sort of friendship.
Roland was determined to call his paper The Brotherhood, so that it would bear in its very title the imprint of the truth which his Christian training had interwoven with every fibre of his being, and which, he also expressed in the motto, "All ye are brethren." In the simplicity of his heart, Roland imagined that every Christian minister must be as profoundly impressed with this great truth as he himself was, and that he could count on the warm sympathy which they, at least, would accord to his paper—intended, as the prospectus stated, "to bring this fundamental principle and its corollary, the Golden Rule, to bear on all social questions," including business arrangements and the relations of employer and employed. So obvious an application of practical Christianity must, he thought, enlist the cordial coöperation of those whose vocation was to teach it.
As we have seen, however, he sometimes found himself disappointed in this very natural expectation.
CHAPTER VII.
A MIDNIGHT MEETING.
Roland was writing busily on, scarcely conscious of the lateness of the hour, absorbed in the pleasant task of pouring out on paper without restraint the passionate pleas and arguments with which his mind was filled, when he was roused by a rather peremptory knock at his door, immediately followed by the apparition of a rugged old face with gray shaggy locks and beard, surmounted by a picturesque red toque.
"Weel, lad, hard at work? Have ye got yer firebrands all ready for the wee foxes' tails, that ye're gaun to send in amang the Philistines' corn? There's a bit o' yer' 'modern interpretation' for ye!" The voice was deep and guttural, and the accent a broad Doric.
"I hope you don't mean to compare me with that grim practical joker!" said Roland, pleasantly. "I'm sure I don't want to do anything destructive. My line is all constructive."