even if the boys took kerosene and dynamite to us."

"Well, if they do, he'll be the first man to pay for it," said Tom; and
he left the office and the house to make the round of the guarded gates.

Ludlow was as good as his word. On the night following the day of
suspense an attempt was made to wreck the inclined railway running from
the mines on Lebanon to the coke yard. It was happily frustrated; but
when Tom and his handful of guards got back to the foot of the hill they
found a fire started in a pile of wooden flasks heaped against the end
of the foundry building.

The fire was easily extinguishable by a willing hand or two, but Tom
tried an experiment. Steam had been kept up in a single battery of
boilers against emergencies, and he directed Helgerson to throw open the
great gates while he ran to the boiler room and sent the fire call of
the huge siren whistle shrieking out on the night.

The experiment was only meagerly successful. Less than a score of the
strikers answered the call, but these worked with a will, and the fire
was quickly put out.

Tom was under the arc-light at the gates when the volunteers straggled
out. He had a word for each man,--a word of appreciation and a plea for
suspended judgment. Most of the men shook their heads despondently, but
a few of them promised to stand on the side of law and order. Tom took
the names of the few, and went back to his guard duty with the burden a
little lightened. But the succeeding night there were more attempts at
violence, three of them so determined as to leave no doubt that the
crisis was at hand. This was Tom's discouraged admission when his father
came to relieve him in the morning.

"We're about at the end of the rope," he said wearily, when Caleb had
closed the door of the log-house yard office behind him. "The two
Helgersons are played out, and neither of us can stand this strain for
another twenty-four hours. I'm just about dead on my feet for sleep, and
I know you are."

The old ex-artilleryman stifled a yawn, and admitted the fact.

"I'm gettin' right old and no-account, son; there's no denyin' that. And
you can't make out to shoulder it all, stout as you are. But what-all
can we do different?"

"I know what I'm going to do. I had a 'phone wire from Bradley, the
sheriff, last night after you went home. He funked like a boy; said he
couldn't raise a posse in South Tredegar that would serve against
striking workmen. Then I wired the governo