ere not here
dragged to the police stations to be brutally lashed at the command of
any underling they had offended. Applause for Boriskoff and his sound
and fury might be interpreted as a concession to their vanity. "We could
do all this," they seemed to say; "if we forbear, let London be
grateful." As for Boriskoff, he had talked so many times in such a
strain that a sudden change in voice and matter surprised them beyond
words. What had happened to him, then? Was the fellow mad when he began
to speak of the copper mines and the days of slavery he had spent
therein?

A hush fell upon the hall when the demagogue struck this unaccustomed
note; rude gas flares shed an ugly yellow glow upon faces which
everywhere asked an unspoken question. What had copper mines to do with
the news from Warsaw, and what had they to do with this assembly?
Presently, however, it came to the people that they were listening to
the story of a wrong, that the pages of a human drama were being
unfolded before them. In glowing words the speaker painted the miner's
life and that of the stokers who kept the furnaces. What a living hell
that labor had been. There were six operations in refining the copper,
he said, and he had served years of apprenticeship to each of them.
Hungry and faint and weary he had kept watch half the night at the
furnace's door and returned to his home at dawn to see white faces half
buried in the ragged beds of his house or to hear the child he loved
crying for the food he could not bring. And in those night watches the
great idea had come to him.

"Friends," he said, "the first conception of the Meltka furnace was
mine. The white heat of the night gave it to me; a child's cry, 'thou
art my father and thou wilt save me,' was my inspiration. Some of you
will have heard that there are smelting works to-day where the
sulphurous acid, which copper pyrites supplies when it is roasted, is
used for the manufacture of sulphuric acid. That was my discovery. Many
have claimed it since, but the Meltka furnace was mine--as God is in
heaven it was mine. Why, then, do I stand among you wanting bread, I who
should own the riches of kings? My friends, I will tell you. A devil
stole my secret from me and has traded it in the markets of the world.
I trusted him. I was poor and he was rich. 'Sell for me and share my
gains,' I said. His honor would be my protection, I thought, his
knowledge my security. Ah, God, what reward had I? He named