hand and an officer demanded in no gentle voice that he surrender it and move on with the rest for answer charles instead of giving up the gun cocked it he would undoubtedly have discharged its contents in the face of the officer if a lieutenant behind had not drawn a pistol and put a ball into the shoulder of the opponent of the law s majesty an hour later found his son in an hospital with a surgeon by his side examining a bullet he had just drawn from his wound well i guess you ve got enough of it smiled the father though he still wore a look of anxiety if you haven t the others have for there s not one of them to be found within two miles of here the boy took the hand held out to him sm young giddy they are right though he replied faintly they won t work at that starving rate and you ll find it out they won t get a chance laughed the father the mine will be shut up till next spring now i didn t care anything about their working but when they began to things i had to interfere charles put on a pleading look you could give them the old wages if you wished he said it would make so little difference to you they can t do any more than exist under the reduced and in a free land like ours a man has a right to live f the shook his head positively business can t be done that way my boy he answered it never was and never will be based on anything but supply and demand if coal can be had at a certain price no employer is going to pay a cent more but it s just as well for you and me not to discuss the matter now the doctor says you want rest for a day or two the next day when the called on his son he found him doing well he would be around in a fortnight the physician told him i ve been rather busy this morning said mr with his almost habitual smile in the first place i have about secured a promise that you will not be but will be permitted to go free as soon as your wound free echoed charles with astonishment am i under arrest certainly you were here by the military charged with a riot the young man drew a long breath of surprise do tou think my he had done all he could to stop the riot until the poor were so i shall be able to get you free i think continued the which will save you a couple of years or so in jail and the other thing which i have been myself to is a long letter to the war department the promotion of the lieutenant who shot you charles wondered if his hearing had not played him false i am much obliged he replied with a new vein of irony you ought to be had he ben a second later according to all accounts you would have been guilty of murder and then it might have taken more influence even than possess to get you released the wounded shoulder gave its possessor a severe at that moment doing more to cause the which spread over his face than the announcement he had just heard and the soldiers who shot down those men women and children in the street like dogs he muttered will there be any punishment for them oh no said the father that is very different they were the laws which the others were breaking charles would not proceed with the argument he recollected distinctly that the first shot was fired by the soldiers at a time when the striking were with their families in the public street doing nothing whatever to justify the outrage the love that he bore his father received a severe strain under this treatment of the people who had young miss been persuaded to the mines by the of his agent but further discussion was useless mr had told him often that he claimed he same right to decide questions that he gave to is son and daughter when charles was allowed to go from the hospital he remained with the and did what he could for them during the long winter that followed almost every cent of his handsome income was expended in food clothing and for the suffering ones and he saw at the end what the assured him in advance he would see he saw the hungry go to their work in the early spring at the reduced just as soon as the mine was opened to them they caught eagerly at the chance to labor as the beaten dog at a bone flung into his jaws if curses and tears could affect the product of toil the coal from the van mines for the next year would have been in the market it would have refused to in the and on the to which it was taken but would have filled the atmosphere with a dull and smoke repulsive to the sight and dangerous to the nostrils of men not a happy smile the faces in that settlement the free american citizens clothed with a manhood supposed to be superior to anything else on earth were bowed under a slavery as great as that which ever the sons of a fiction of the constitution told them they were born equal but the stern logic of facts raised one above their heads whom fate had made their master and an old j chapter xxii seeing an old up in the woods the stayed till late in november mrs before that time returned to her fifth avenue home parting from her husband with her usual sweetness but with no special of affection partly from 