loaves of black bread a
day. As some of the miners have eight and ten children, an idea of the
actual need of relief from some source may be formed."

Paragraphs like the above never reach the printed page of a newspaper
that has sworn allegiance to or is bound to support the Magnates.

It is now December twentieth. The miners resolve to make a final appeal
to the Paradise Coal Company to at least start the mines on half time.
If the company grants this appeal, there will be joy in the miners'
homes for Christmas.

Christmas is no more to the Magnates than any other calender day. The
necessary time for the creation of the coal famine has not elapsed, and
until it has there will not be another ton of coal taken from the pits.

Harvey Trueman is expected to confer with the leaders in the afternoon.
He will deliver the appeal to the company, and the following day,
Sunday, the miners will know if they are to go back to work.

"In the event of Purdy, the final arbiter, refusing to start up on half
time," says Metz, who is now the leader of the Miner's Union, "we can go
to Latimer and Harleigh, to-morrow. The mines will be closed; they are
only working them six days a week now. We will appeal to the men to quit
work unless the Paradise Company gives us a chance to earn our bread."

"If the Harleigh men won't go out, they will at least give us some food
for a Christmas dinner," says a miner whose hollow cheeks tell of long
fasting.

"Peter Gick died last night," a miner states as he enters the hall. "He
went to the ash dumps to pick a basket of _cinders_; on his way back to
his house he fell. He was so weak that he could not get up. The snow is
two feet deep on the road, and it was drifting then; it soon covered him
up. This morning his son, Ernst, found him. Of course he was frozen
stiff."

"Where is his body?" Metz asks.

"Sheriff ordered it buried by the police."

"A public funeral might prove dangerous to the Magnates," observes Metz.
"Our modern rulers have profited by the experience of the ancients."

Promptly at two o'clock Trueman arrives at the hall.

The committee on resolutions present him with their petition.

"I shall do all that I can to make the Company appreciate the condition
in which you are placed. You may depend upon it, there will be work for
you before Christmas," Trueman assures them at parting.

"We shall want an answer by to-morrow morning at ten o'clock," the
miners urge in chorus.