erseded torches in the
runways of the mines. Bathhouses were found in all the shafts. In the
smelters the long, killing hours were abandoned and a score of safety
devices were introduced. But each gain for labor had come after a bitter
struggle with the employers. So the whole history of the Wahoo Valley
was written in the lines of his broken face.

The reformer with his iridescent dream of progress often hangs its
realization upon a single phase of change. Thus when Grant Adams
banished black powder from the district, he expected the whole phantasm
of dawn to usher in the perfect day for the miners. When he secured
electric lights in the runways and baths in the shaft house, he
confidently expected large things to follow. While large things
hesitated, he saw another need and hurried to it.

Thus it happened, that in the hurrying after a new need, Grant Adams had
always remained in his own district, except for a brief season when he
and Dr. Nesbit sallied forth in a State-wide campaign to defend the
Doctor's law to compel employers to pay workmen for industrial
accidents, as the employers replace broken machinery--a law which the
Doctor had pushed through the Legislature and which was before the
people for a referendum vote. When Grant went out of the Wahoo Valley
district he attracted curious crowds, crowds that came to see the queer
labor leader who won without strikes. And when the crowds came under
Grant's spell, he convinced them. For he felt intensely. He believed
that this law would right a whole train of incidental wrongs of labor.
So he threw himself into the fight with a crusader's ardor. Grant and
the Doctor journeyed over the State through July and August; and in
September the wily Doctor trapped Tom Van Dorn into a series of joint
debates with Grant that advertised the cause widely and well. From these
debates Grant Adams emerged a somebody in politics. For oratory, however
polished, and scholarship, however plausible, cannot stand before the
wrath of an indignant man in a righteous cause who can handle himself
and suppress his wrath upon the platform.

As the week of the debate dragged on and as the pageant of it trailed
clear across the State, with crowds hooting and cheering, Doctor
Nesbit's cup of joy ran over. And when Van Dorn failed to appear for the
Saturday meeting at the capital, the Doctor's happiness mounted to glee.

That night, long after the midnight which ended the day's triumph, Grant
a