g the International Hymn again, and
then the Marseillaise, and went home dreaming high dreams.

As Grant and Laura walked from the hall, the last to leave the meeting,
after the women had finished making out their list of pickets, the
streets were empty and they met--or rather failed to meet, Mrs. Dick
Bowman, with Mugs in tow, who crossed the street obviously to avoid
Grant and his companion.

Grant and Laura, walking briskly along and planning the next day's work,
passed the smelters where the soldiers were on sentry duty. They passed
the shaft houses where Harvey militiamen were bunked and guarded by
sentinels. They passed the habiliments of war in a score of peaceful
places.

"Grant," cried Laura, "I really think now we'll win--that the strike of
peace will prove all that you have lived for."

"But if we fail," he replied, "it proves nothing--except perhaps that it
was worth trying, and will be worth trying and trying and trying--until
it wins!"

It was half past twelve. Grant Adams, standing before the Vanderbilt
House, talking with Henry Fenn, was saying, "Well, Henry, one week of
this--one week of peace--and the triumph of peace will be--"

A terrific explosion shut his mouth. Across the night he saw a red glare
a few hundred feet away. An instant later it was dark again. He ran
toward the place where the glare had winked out. As he turned a corner,
he saw stars where there should have been shaft house No. 7 of the Wahoo
Fuel Company's mines, and he knew that it had been destroyed. In it were
a dozen sleeping soldiers of the Harvey Militia Company, and it flashed
through his mind that Lida Bowman at last had spoken.

CHAPTER XLVII

IN WHICH GRANT ADAMS AND LAURA VAN DORN TAKE A WALK DOWN MARKET STREET
AND MRS. NESBIT ACQUIRES A LONG LOST GRANDSON-IN-LAW

Grant Adams and Henry Fenn were among the first to arrive at the scene
of the explosion. Henry Fenn had tried to stop Grant from going so
quickly, thinking his presence at the scene would raise a question of
his guilt, but he cried:

"They may need me, Henry--come on--what's a quibble of guilt when a
life's to save?"

When they came to the pile of debris, they saw Dick Bowman coming
up--barefooted, coatless and breathless. Grant and Fenn had run less
than fifteen hundred feet--Dick lived a mile from the shaft house. Grant
Adams's mind flashed suspicion toward the Bowmans. He went to Dick
across the wreckage and said:

"Oh, Dick--I'm sorry