missed the pay-day yesterday."

Tom started as if he had been stung.

"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to
Louisville!"

"Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls
yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of
the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all."

Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked
him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?"

"The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have
stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out--made 'em quit. We're done,
Buddy."

Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and
fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a
yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the
tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was
standing in the doorway, thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that
had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone.

As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing
speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping
in darkness and fell before he could reach her.

It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid
her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind.
Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the
edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to
revive her.

"I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the
man.

But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings.
What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken
heart: "_Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son_!"

XXI

GILGAL

In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had
its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the
_Morning Tribune_ that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he
did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia
was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down.

But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to
trickle in over the telephone wires, a _Tribune_ man called, in passing,
at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to
sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of hi