life in vain. I must do the work she has begun. If I can prevent the
miners from committing acts of violence it will atone for the loss of
Sister Martha."

From the top of the mountain, Trueman catches a glimpse of the torches
and miners' lamps. The miners are moving toward the town. Trueman is
familiar with every inch of ground about Wilkes-Barre. He has played on
the mountain as a boy. He now recollects a by-path which will bring him
to the town in advance of the miners who are on the wagon road.

"Have the body of Sister Martha taken to the Mount Hope Seminary," he
says to the trainman, and away he speeds for Wilkes-Barre.

The Coal and Iron Police are thrown into utter consternation. They dare
not advance upon the town in the darkness for fear that there is another
plot to destroy them.

The captain orders them to march across the mountain so as to enter the
town from a direction opposite to that by which they are expected. To
affect this detour will delay their arrival several hours, but their own
safety is more to be considered than that of the townspeople.

And the miners? They have heard the explosion and believe that the Coal
and Iron Police have been sent to their doom.

With the police out of their way there is nothing to check the miners in
the accomplishment of their design to recover the body of Carl Metz.

It is the radical element that has conceived the idea of wrecking the
train. They take full control of the miners and lead the way to join
their comrades on the Esplanade. As they pass through the streets
hundreds of men and women who have known nothing of the plot to wreck
the train, fall in line and march on in the procession. The number of
miners and townspeople soon reaches the thousands. By the time they
arrive at the Esplanade there are ten thousand in line.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AT THE DEAD COAL KING'S MANSION.

Along the Esplanade the hurrying thousands begin to move in the
direction of the Terrace; miners who have been in the shafts for
eighteen hours; yard-hands from the railroads; iron founders, naked save
for their breeches, have quit their furnaces; townspeople whom fear
impels to see what the night will bring forth; this heterogeneous horde
presses on to the scene of the murder.

It is a night that lends an appropriate setting to so strange and
uncanny an event. The sky is leaden except for a streak on the western
horizon where the fading, sinister light of the sun gives to