eeking to present a petition?

"Have you shot any one?" asks one of the deputies of his nearest
companion.

"Shot any one! Well, I should think I had. I've seen four drop. Here
goes a fifth."

To stand, to run, to fall to the ground, all are equally futile as means
of escape. Extermination is all that will stay the fire of the police.

Sheriff Marlin and Captain Grout stand in the middle of the road. Metz,
O'Connor, and Nevins, a mine foreman, are standing beside them.

O'Connor carries the white flag; Nevins the National emblem.

"Disarm those men," Marlin directs the Captain.

"Disarm them?" Captain Grout repeats, inquiringly.

"Certainly. They have sticks in their hands."

Two deputies, who have exhausted their supply of cartridges in their
magazine rifles, stop reloading and rush upon Nevins. They beat him over
the head with their rifle butts. The flag is snatched out of his hands.

O'Connor is dealt a blow an instant later.

The subjugation of the unarmed miners is accomplished.

One by one the Coal and Iron Police return.

Some of them bring in captives who have escaped death, but who still
have felt the sting of the bullets.

Of the sixty miners, twenty-three are killed outright; ten are mortally
wounded; twenty-one have less serious wounds.

Six have run the gauntlet and are fleeing back to Hazleton.

The triumphant march of the police to Hazleton is begun.

"We will carry the wounded," says the sheriff. "They might get through
to Harleigh and Latimer."

"We will round up the six who escaped," Captain Grout assures the
sheriff. He then details ten men to run down the miners who have eluded
capture.

This is an easy matter, as the footprints of the miners are perfectly
distinct in the soft snow. On the six trails the men set off, as a pack
of hounds on the scent of game.

This man-hunt results in an addition of _six_ to the list of the slain.

Gorman Purdy's orders have been carried out.

His police have been sworn in as deputies; they have met the miners and
have "fired first."

The sanctity of the law enveloped their act. They shot as _Deputies_.

They dispersed a band of miners who were on the highway, armed,
according to the sheriff's version, "with sticks," and bent on creating
trouble in Harleigh.

Did it matter that the "sticks" were flag staffs on which were displayed
the White Flag of truce, and the Emblem of Liberty?

CHAPTER VI.

A STAND FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE.