"I cannot turn aside."
"Meaning?" inquired Sharon Whipple.
"Meaning that we cannot accept another dollar of tainted money for our great work," said Merle, crisply.
"Oh," said Sharon, "but that's what your pa just told you! You accepted it till he shut off on you."
"Against my better judgment and with many misgivings," returned the apostle of light. "Now we can go to the bitter end with no false sense of obligation."
"But your magazine will have to stop, I fear," interposed Gideon gently.
Merle smiled wanly, shaking his head the while as one who contradicts from superior knowledge.
"You little know us," he retorted when the full effect of the silent, head-shaking smile had been had. "The people are at last roused. Money will pour in upon us. Money is the last detail we need think of. Our movement is solidly grounded. We have at our back"—he glanced defiantly at each of the three Whipples—"an awakened proletariat."
"My!" said Gideon.
"You are out of the current here," explained Merle, kindly. "You don't suspect how close we are to revolution. Yet that glorious rising of our comrades in Russia might have warned you. But your class, of course, never is warned."