t poor Billy's weary fight was over; and I could not help agreeing
with Craig that it was there the League had its revenge.

CHAPTER X

WHAT CAME TO SLAVIN

Billy Breen's legacy to the Black Rock mining camp was a new League,
which was more than the old League re-made. The League was new in its
spirit and in its methods. The impression made upon the camp by Billy
Breen's death was very remarkable, and I have never been quite able to
account for it. The mood of the community at the time was peculiarly
susceptible. Billy was one of the oldest of the old-timers. His decline
and fall had been a long process, and his struggle for life and manhood
was striking enough to arrest the attention and awaken the sympathy of
the whole camp. We instinctively side with a man in his struggle for
freedom; for we feel that freedom is native to him and to us. The sudden
collapse of the struggle stirred the men with a deep pity for the beaten
man, and a deep contempt for those who had tricked him to his doom. But
though the pity and the contempt remained, the gloom was relieved and
the sense of defeat removed from the men's minds by the transforming
glory of Billy's last hour. Mr. Craig, reading of the tragedy of Billy's
death, transfigured defeat into victory, and this was generally accepted
by the men as the true reading, though to them it was full of mystery.
But they could all understand and appreciate at full value the spirit
that breathed through the words of the dying man: 'Don't be 'ard on 'em,
they didn't mean no 'arm.' And this was the new spirit of the League.

It was this spirit that surprised Slavin into sudden tears at the
grave's side. He had come braced for curses and vengeance, for all knew
it was he who had doctored Billy's lemonade, and instead of vengeance
the message from the dead that echoed through the voice of the living
was one of pity and forgiveness.

But the days of the League's negative, defensive warfare were over.
The fight was to the death, and now the war was to be carried into
the enemy's country. The League men proposed a thoroughly equipped and
well-conducted coffee-room, reading-room, and hall, to parallel the
enemy's lines of operation, and defeat them with their own weapons upon
their own ground. The main outlines of the scheme were clearly defined
and were easily seen, but the perfecting of the details called for all
Craig's tact and good sense. When, for instance, Vernon Winton, who had
char