cries the detective, at the same time drawing his revolver. "Get back to
your breakers. If the superintendent sees you on this side of the river,
you'll all get _sacked_," he adds as a threat more terrible than the
shooting of one of them.

"We don't want to make trouble," explains O'Neil. "All that we ask is
that we may take the body of Metz and give it decent burial. Has the
superintendent said we could not have it?"

Mr. Judson, the superintendent of the Giant Breakers, appears at the
door. He steps out on the piazza.

A sullen roar greets him.

"Until the coroner has disposed of the case," he begins, "no one will be
permitted to touch the body. You have heard my decision. Now go back to
your work."

The recollection of the treachery practiced on them in the riot of 1900,
when their dead fellow-workmen were put in crates and buried by the
police at night, without religious rites, comes to the minds of all.
They have sworn then that never again would they be cheated of the right
to bury their martyred brothers.

"Give us the body," cry a hundred voices in chorus.

"Go on, go on," shout the pressing thousands. "Go in and get it."

The forces for a storm have been gathering since the first tidings of
the tragedy reached the people.

When they heard that Carl Metz, the foreman of the Keystone furnace, had
killed Gorman Purdy and had then ended his own life, they were
dumbfounded. Then as a lightning flash the information had spread that
Metz had left a note explaining that he had killed the tyrannical Coal
Magnate for the good of mankind. This word of explanation had clarified
the confused thoughts in the minds of all. They read in that message
their emancipation. The hour to strike a blow for their long lost rights
had come.

The opposition offered by the detective and Judson, proves to be the
shock needed to precipitate the storm.

By a single impulse the crowd rushes up the terrace. Its advance is
irresistible. Both Judson and his hireling see the futility of
attempting to resist the mob. They, therefore, withdraw within the
house. As they enter they close the massive oak doors. Even as the doors
swing to, the weight of a dozen powerful shoulders is thrown against
them.

For a moment the advance is checked.

Turning to the windows, the infuriated men shatter them one by one, and
like the sea pouring into a breach in a ship, they enter the house. One
of the first to enter runs to the doors and flings