lived.

It was clear enough to O'Day now, though he ridiculed Bruno for suggesting
that Mr. Hobart interested himself in such matters.

The summons was served in October. O'Day appeared before the November
court. They might have brought half a dozen different counts against him,
but they did not. The prosecuting attorney, with great confidence in his
own judgment, had drawn up the papers specifically charging Dennis O'Day
with selling to minors. He had evidence sufficient on that one count to
have his license revoked.

The trial passed off quickly. Four boys, not over sixteen, testified that
Dennis O'Day himself had sold liquor to them, not once but many times. It
was proof positive without Joe Ratowsky giving his testimony.

O'Day himself sat hunched up in the prisoners' dock, glinting his keen
eyes about from witness to juror. When the witnesses had testified against
him, his attorney brought forth, in turn, the father of each boy, who
declared that he had personally given the saloonist permission to sell
liquor to his son. By this the Minor Liquor Law was, in effect,
circumvented. That each father was the richer by some of O'Day's money was
generally supposed. But that was not the issue at hand. The case was
dismissed. O'Day went back to Bitumen wiser in that he knew whom to fear,
and with the privilege of freely selling to the young boys who had
testified against him.

Though to all appearances the matter ended here, the fight had just
begun.

It would have been impossible for anyone, except O'Day, to tell just how
the trouble began. But before a month had passed, there arose a feeling of
dissatisfaction among the miners. It could be felt rather than expressed.
Where once every Slav and Pole smiled at the mention of the boss's name,
now there was only silence, a silence ominous to those who knew the signs.
Joe Ratowsky understood and went at midnight to ask Mr. Hobart to go away
somewhere for a time, until the discontent passed. But Mr. Hobart was not
one to leave his work because a man of Dennis O'Day's stamp saw fit to
disapprove of him. If there was trouble brewing, there was all the more
reason for him to stand at his post. He laughed at Ratowsky's fears, and
encouraged him to think that half the discontent among the men was of his
own imagination.

A series of accidents, or what passed as such, began immediately after
Dennis O'Day was acquitted.

The cable, which drew the coal cars up the incline, brok