y who knows how poor you men live,
how little you get, and how you risk your lives every day you work. How
should they know? They spend money enough to have things fine." Then he
added, "They hain't to blame if the men they've put in charge hain't
honest."

That was enough for one night. O'Day, still discreet and tactful, dropped
the subject. Not so with the men. They rolled the idea about until it grew
into immense proportions. A week passed, and yet they talked. If there had
been one among them fitted to lead, there would have been open trouble.
There was no one. Bruno had daring and sagacity enough, but he was an
Italian--a Dago, in common parlance, and the Slavs and Poles hated the
Dagos worse than they hated the smallpox.

Sometime later a small stationary engine blew up; and Colowski was hit on
the head by a piece of flying iron. Ellis, the engineer, insisted that he
was not careless. He had kept his steam-register down to one hundred and
fifty pounds when the limit was three hundred. Superintendent Hobart was
about to discharge him when Joe Ratowsky appeared.

"It's the tivil's own work, b'gosh, Meester Hobart. Gerani, he comes and
he fools with the little boiler-clock. Me come like the tivil, b'gosh, or
me could have stopped it quick." He had picked up the steam-register and
was holding it in his hand. It was what he called the boiler-clock. It had
been hurled a great distance but yet remained whole.

Mr. Hobart took it from Joe's hand to examine it. He had given little
credence to Ratowsky's words. He whistled softly to himself as he examined
the register. He began to believe the Pole right. Affairs at Bitumen were
assuming a serious aspect.

O'Day's acquittal had taught him one lesson--to be prepared for any
emergency. For that reason, he handed the register to Ellis. "Look closely
at that," he said. "There's evidence enough there to free you from blame.
But I wish you and Joe to see this for yourselves and not take my word for
it."

Ellis, too, whistled when he examined the register. Little wonder that he
had not been able to put on a full head of steam. A strong but almost
invisible steel rod had been driven in the face of the register at such a
point that the hand moving under the pressure of steam would stop at the
one-hundred-and-fifty-pound mark.

"It couldn't have been driven there by the explosion?" asked Ellis.

"Impossible. We haven't a steel brad like that about the place, and never
have ha