lless Company and put him
in the position of leader of a million miners.

BOOK II.

The Syndicate Incorporates.

CHAPTER VII.

AN ANTI-TRUST CONFERENCE.

From the hour that Trueman was selected as a delegate to the great
Anti-Trust Conference to convene in the city of Chicago, he has devoted
his hours, day and night, to study. In making his advent in the
conference, he enters the arena of national politics; he means to go
prepared. Martha has prevailed upon him to accept the nomination as a
candidate for the State of Pennsylvania, and he has been elected by the
unanimous vote of the Unions. This exhibition of confidence on the part
of the toilers of the state has made a deep impression on him, and has
fixed his resolve to do something that will be worthy of his
constituents.

The sudden transition he has undergone from being the staunch supporter
of the coal barons, to becoming their bitterest opponent, has left many
of the opinion that he is working some deep scheme for the undoing of
the unionists. Nor is this opinion confined to any small number. "He
changed his views too quickly," is the general sentiment in the ranks of
the small unions where Trueman is not personally known. This lurking
suspicion was what had operated strongly at first against securing
Trueman's consent to be a candidate. Martha has worked quietly,
assiduously, among the men she knew, and who placed absolute faith in
her advice. She has been the direct means of bringing about his
election.

Now he is to leave her, and must face the supreme opportunity of his
life.

It is not without a pang that he bids her farewell. She has come to be a
source of great comfort to him since his enlistment in the ranks of the
humble. The schoolday acquaintance has been renewed. He has learned to
appreciate the fact that he was the cause of her having donned the dress
of the sisterhood. His ambition to rise in the world made it impossible
for him to yield to the dictates of his heart and the mental vista that
opened before him at the close of his college course, did not have her
in it. The woman he saw there must be the favorite of fortune. He had
selfishly abandoned certain love for possible fortune and in the active
life to which he was at once introduced, all thoughts of Martha had been
driven from his mind.

But Martha had had no counteractant to soften or obliterate the thoughts
of her blasted hopes. The refuge of the convent appealed