al 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.

Harvey Trueman leaves for Wilkes-Barre on the mission of appealing to
the humanity of the Coal Magnates.

Miners' wives and children stream to the Town Hall, to receive their
bread and rations.

It is at such times as these, where the miners are ruthlessly shut out
of the mines, that the highest value of the Miner's Union is
demonstrated. From the slender treasury, which is enriched only by the
pennies of the miners during their weeks of employment, the money is
drawn to purchase the rations that must be had to keep the