he
draws. The cause of the people is in safer hands.' Then they called for
you. There have been questions about your whereabouts every day. They
wanted to impeach you for high treason. Through all the storm, Foley is
the only man who has kept quiet. He sent for me. I referred him to
you."

"The time for conferences is past," Maraton said firmly.

"We know it," Ernshaw replied. "What's the good of them? A sop for the
men, a pat on the back for their leaders, a buttering Press, and a
public who cares only how much or how little they are inconvenienced.
We have had enough of that. My men must wake into a new life, or sleep
for ever."

"What is the foreign news?" Maraton asked.

"All uncertain. The air is full of rumours. Several Atlantic liners
are late, and reports have come by wireless of a number of strange
cruisers off Queenstown. Personally, I don't think that anything
definite has been done. The moment to strike isn't yet. The Admiralty
have been working like slaves to get coal to their fleet."

"You came alone?" Maraton enquired.

Ernshaw nodded.

"I came alone because the seven of us are as men with one heart. We are
with you into hell!"

"And the men," Maraton continued,--"I wonder how many of them realise
what they may have to go through."

"You stirred something up in them," Ernshaw said slowly, "something they
have never felt before. You made them feel that they have the right of
nature to live a dignified life, and to enjoy a certain share of the
profits of their labour, not as a grudgingly given wage but as a
law-established right. There's a feeling born in them that's new--it's
done them good already. I never heard so little grumbling at the pay.
I think it's in their heart that they're fighting for a principle this
time, and not for an extra coin dragged from the unwilling pockets of
men who have no human right to be the janitors of what their labour
produces. They've got the proper feeling at last, sir. You've touched
something which is as near the religious sense as anything a man can
feel who has no call that way. It's something that will last, too!
Their womenkind have laid hold of it. When they start life again, they
mean to start on a different plane."

"How are the accounts lasting out?" Maraton asked.

Ernshaw produced some books from his pocket and they sat down at the
table.

"We're not so badly off for money," he declared. "It's the purchasing
power of it that's making things di