"You've got Mother and me. And why don't you start again, Father? I'd help."
"I'm too old, Roger. I've lost my vim. We'll close the shop, to-day. A man's coming up from Chicago to buy in the machinery."
A half hour later, Moore posted a great sign on the office door. "This factory goes out of business to-day." Then with the various keys of the buildings in his pocket, he went home. Roger hung about to see how the men took the news.
By noon, the two hundred employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should be destroyed, that men such as he were a menace to America. Roger, standing by Ole's side, saw suddenly in his inner mind his father's gray head on his mother's shoulder.
"You lie, you dirty anarchist!" he roared, and heaved a brick at the speaker's head.
There was an uproar. Some one helped the speaker wipe the blood out of his eyes and tied his head up, while Ole pinned both Roger's arms behind him.
"They say that's Moore's boy threw that brick," cried the speaker. "Come up here, you hell cat, and show yourself to these downtrodden workmen."
"Let me go, Ole," said Roger, with sudden calm. "I want to say something."
Ole looked into Roger's blue eyes. "All right," he said, after a moment, "only if you get mad again, I can't answer for this crowd. They're sore."
"I'm all right," muttered Roger, and he pushed his way to the office steps where the speaker stood. "Here I am," he cried; "what about it?"