d attorney always at his
beck and call, Gorman Purdy, president of the company, is willing that
Trueman shall occupy the office rent free in addition to the liberal
salary which is paid him.

While Trueman is successfully managing the legal affairs of the Paradise
Coal Company and achieving a brilliant reputation at the bar of
Pennsylvania, Gorman Purdy is "trying him out" with an entirely
different object in view. He desires to test the young man's mettle as a
man even more than as a lawyer. To accomplish this end it is most
important that Trueman shall occupy the office next the suite of the
great coal corporation.

Lying on the lawyer's desk is an open envelope, by the side of which is
a check for one thousand dollars, being the amount of his salary from
the coal company for two months. In his ears still ring the plaintive
sobs of the Magyar's widow and the denunciation of O'Connor.

"The mine boss will put her in the street!"

In his mind's eye he pictures the dusty road separating the two rows of
miners' huts, down around the bend in the Susquehanna. He sees the
mountain beyond and the column of steam rising from a more distant
breaker, half way up the slope--a beautiful vision from the distance,
but how squalid in its dull gray misery to those who spend their lives
in its midst.

At this moment the miners who were in attendance at court are trudging
along this highway, chattering their grievances to one another. The
widow and her boy bring up the rear, while the men march solemnly on
ahead, talking of their right to live--just to live.

Across these mountains, in the city of Philadelphia, six score years and
more ago a convention once uttered the identical sentiments being voiced
by these serfs of the coal seams. Harvey Trueman has been a deep student
of the teachings of that convention. On the shelves of his library are
the well-thumbed writings of Washington and the Adamses and Thomas
Jefferson. He is a firm believer of the doctrines enunciated at Faneuil
Hall, and by Henry in Virginia.

To-morrow, perhaps to-night, the widow's paltry chattels will be set in
the middle of that road by the sheriff. She will be dispossessed by the
Paradise Coal Company. A frail woman, pale with poverty of the blood,
shrinking with every breath she draws, because she knows the very air
she breathes comes to her over the lands of the Coal Barons--a haggard
widow of the mines will be deprived of her miserable shelter, not fit