"S. Strong.
"P.S. Strong's ahed."
Meanwhile Sinth was in trouble. Young Mr. Migley had come, with a gang of sawyers and axemen, to dethrone the Emperor and take possession. He had his customary get-off-the-earth air about him—an air that often accompanies the title to vast acreage. He found only Sinth and the children and summarily ordered them to leave. Then she gave him what she called "a piece of her mind." It was a good-sized piece, all truth and just measure.
While the furniture was being thrown out-ofdoors she got ready to go. In the heart of Sinth indignation had supplanted sorrow. It was in her countenance and the vigor of her foot-fall and in the way that she filled and closed and handled her satchel. Some of the brawny woodsmen stood looking as she and the children came out-of-doors—a solemn-faced little company. Something from the hearts of the men made Sinth touch her eyes with her handkerchief. Then a curious thing happened. Some of the lumber-jacks dropped their saws and axes.
Those people could forgive much in "a good fellow"—they could forgive almost any infamy, it would seem, but the stony heart. Let one do a mean thing and rouse their quick sympathies a little and their oaths were as a deadly, fateful curse upon him. They never forgot the tear of sympathy or the wrath of resentment.
The sorrow of the weak now seemed to touch the hearts of the strong. The children, seeing the tears of their aunt as she turned for a last look at her home, followed slowly with an air of great dejection. Then a strange pathos rose out of their littleness, and an ancient law seemed to be writ upon the faces of the men: "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
A murmur of disapproval arose, and suddenly one voice blared a sacred name coupled and qualified with curious adjectives—jumped up, livin', sufferin', eternal—as if it would be most explicit.
"Boys," the voice added, "I can't see no woman ner no childern treated that way."
A man took the satchel out of Sinth's hand.
"You stay here," said he. "We won't stan' fer this."