What was such a man doing among these
outcasts? Peter decided that he must be one of the shrewd ones who
made money out of inciting the discontented. Then came a young girl,
frail and sensitive, slightly crippled. As she crossed the room to
shake his hand tears rolled down her cheeks, and Peter stood
embarrassed, wondering if she had just lost a near relative, and
what was he to say about it. From her first words he gathered, to
his great consternation, that she had been moved to tears by the
story of what he himself had endured.
Ada Ruth was a poet, and this was a new type for Peter; after much
groping in his mind he set her down for one of the dupes of the
movement--a poor little sentimental child, with no idea of the
wickedness by which she was surrounded. With her came a Quaker boy
with pale, ascetic face and black locks which he had to shake back
from his eyes every now and then; he wore a Windsor tie, and a black
felt hat, and other marks of eccentricity and from his speeches
Peter gathered that he was ready to blow up all the governments of
the world in the interests of Pacificism. The same was true of
McCormick, an I. W. W. leader who had just served sixty days in
jail, a silent young Irishman with drawn lips and restless black
eyes, who made Peter uneasy by watching him closely and saying
scarcely a word.
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