To reveal what he believed to be the truth of the tragedy would be to save the community and himself--and to lose, for all time, the woman he loved. McIver did not know that through the tragedy Helen was already lost to him.
In his extremity the factory owner had come at last to the man who was said to wield such a powerful influence over the minds of the people. He had never before seen the interior of that hut on the cliff nor met the man who for so many years had been confined there. Standing just outside the door, he looked curiously about the room with the unconscious insolence of his strength.
The man in the wheel chair did not speak. When Billy looked at him he signaled his wishes in their silent language, and, watching his visitor, waited.
For a long moment McIver gazed at the old basket maker as if estimating his peculiar strength, then he said with an unintentional touch of contempt in his heavy voice, "So _you_ are the Interpreter."
"And you," returned the man in the wheel chair, gently, "are McIver."
McIver was startled. "How did you know my name?"
"Is McIver's name a secret also?" came the strange reply.
McIver's eyes flashed with a light that those who sat opposite him in the game of business had often seen. With perfect self-control he said, coolly, "I have been told often that I should come to see you but--" he paused and again looked curiously about the room.
The Interpreter, smiling, caught up the unfinished sentence. "But you do not see how an old, poverty-stricken and crippled maker of baskets can be of any use to you."
McIver spoke as one measuring his words. "They tell me you help people who are in trouble."
"Are you then in trouble?" asked the Interpreter, kindly.
The other did not answer, and the man in the wheel chair continued, still kindly, "What trouble can the great and powerful McIver have? You have never been hungry--you have never felt the cold--you have no children to starve--no son to be killed."
"I suppose you hold me personally responsible for the strike and for all the hardships that the strikers have brought upon themselves and their families?" said McIver. "You fellows who teach this brotherhood-of-man rot and never have more than one meal ahead yourselves always blame men like me for all the suffering in the world."