nd the dump boss called the roll; Hogan was
missing. In an hour they came and took Mrs. Hogan to the undertaker's
room near the smelter--where so many women had stood beside death in its
most awful forms. She had her baby in her arms, with another plucking at
her skirts and she stood mutely beside the coffin that they would not
open. For she knew what other women knew about the smelter, knew that
when they will not open the coffin, it must not be opened. So the little
procession rode to the Hogan home, where Laura Van Dorn was waiting.
Perhaps it was because she could not see the face of the dead that it
seemed unreal to the widow. But she did not moan nor cry--after the
first scream that came when she knew the worst. Stolidly she went
through her tasks until after the funeral.

Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her
black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing
for years: "Mrs. Van Dorn, I'm going to do something you won't like." To
Laura's questioning eyes Violet answered: "I know your ma, or some one
else has told you all about me--but," she shut her mouth tightly and
said slowly:

"But no matter what they say--I'm going to the Judge; he's got to make
the railroad company pay and pay well. It's all I've got on earth--for
the children. We have three dollars in my pocketbook and will have to
wait until the fifteenth before I get his last month's wages, and I know
they'll dock him up to the very minute of the day--that day! I wouldn't
do it for anything else on earth, Mrs. Van Dorn--wild horses couldn't
drag me there--but I'm going to the Judge--for the children. He can
help."

So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off,
Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the
Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge's
office. She would have told him her story--but he interrupted: "Yes,
Violet--I read it in the _Times_. But what can I do--you know I'm
not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the
railroad, and you know, Violet, he assumed the risk. What do they offer
you?"

"Judge--for God's sake don't talk that way to me. That's the way you
used to talk to those miners' wives--ugh!" she cried. "I remember it
all--that assumed risk. Only this--he was working ten hours a day on a
job that wouldn't let him sleep, and he oughtn't to be working but eight
hours, if they hadn'