THE BURNED BREAKER.
For a long time Bennie lay there, pitifully weeping. Then, away off
somewhere in the mine, he heard a noise. He lifted his head. By degrees
the noise grew louder; then it sounded almost like footsteps. Suppose
it were some one coming; suppose it were Tom! The light of hope flashed
up in Bennie’s breast with the thought.
But the sound ceased, the stillness settled down more profoundly than
before, and about the boy’s heart the fear and loneliness came creeping
back. Was it possible that the noise was purely imaginary?
Suddenly, tripping down the passages, bounding from the walls, echoing
through the chambers, striking faintly, but, oh, how sweetly, upon
Bennie’s ears, came the well-known call,--
“Ben-nie-e-e-e!”
The sound died away in a faint succession of echoing _e_’s.
Bennie sprang to his feet with a cry.
“Tom! Tom! Tom, here I am.”
Before the echoes of his voice came back to him they were broken by the
sound of running feet, and down the winding galleries came Tom, as fast
as his lamp and his legs would take him, never stopping till he and
Bennie were in one another’s arms.
“Bennie, it was my fault!” exclaimed Tom. “Patsy Donnelly told me you
went out with Sandy McCulloch while I was up at the stables; an’ I went
way home, an’ Mommie said you hadn’t been there, an’ I came back to
find you, an’ I went up to your door an’ you wasn’t there, an’ I called
an’ called, an’ couldn’t hear no answer; an’ then I thought maybe you’d
tried to come out alone, an’ got off in the cross headin’ an’ got lost,
an’”--
Tom stopped from sheer lack of breath, and Bennie sobbed out,--
“I did, I did get lost an’ scared, an’--an’--O Tom, it was awful!”
The thought of what he had experienced unnerved Bennie again, and,
still holding Tom’s hand, he sat down on the floor of the mine and wept
aloud.
“There, Bennie, don’t cry!” said Tom, soothingly; “don’t cry! You’re
found now. Come, jump up an’ le’s go home; Mommie’ll be half-crazy.”
It was touching to see the motherly way in which this boy of fourteen
consoled and comforted his weaker brother, and helped him again to his
feet. With his arm around the blind boy’s waist, Tom led him down,
through the chambers, out into the south heading, and so to the foot of
the slope.
It was not a great distance; Bennie’s progress had been so slow that,
although he had, as he feared, wandered off by the cross heading into
the southern part of the mine, he had not been able to get very far
away.
At the foot of the slope they stopped to rest, and Bennie told about
the strange man who had talked with him at the doorway. Tom could give
no explanation of the matter, except that the man must have been one
of the strikers. The meaning of his strange conduct he could no more
understand than could Bennie.
It was a long way up the slope, and for more than half the distance it
was very steep; like climbing up a ladder. Many times on the upward way
the boys stopped to rest. Always when he heard Bennie’s breathing grow
hard and laborious, Tom would complain of being himself tired, and they
would turn about and sit for a few moments on a tie, facing down the
slope.
Out at last into the quiet autumn night! Bennie breathed a long sigh of
relief when he felt the yielding soil under his feet and the fresh air
in his face.
Ah! could he but have seen the village lights below him, the glory of
the sky and the jewelry of stars above him, and the half moon slipping
up into the heavens from its hiding-place beyond the heights of
Campbell’s Ledge, he would, indeed, have known how sweet and beautiful
the upper earth is, even with the veil of night across it, compared
with the black recesses of the mine.
It was fully a mile to the boys’ home; but, with light hearts and
willing feet, they soon left the distance behind them, and reached the
low-roofed cottage, where the anxious mother waited in hope and fear
for the coming of her children.
“Here we are, Mommie!” shouted Tom, as he came around the corner
and saw her standing on the doorstep in the moonlight watching. Out
into the road she ran then, and gathered her two boys into her arms,
kissed their grimy, coal-blackened faces, and listened to their
oft-interrupted story, with smiles and with tears, as she led them to
her house.
But Tom stopped at the door and turned back.
“I promised Sandy McCulloch,” he said, “to go over an’ tell him if I
found Bennie. He said he’d wait up for me, an’ go an’ help me hunt him
up if I came back without him. It’s only just over beyond the breaker;
it won’t take twenty minutes, an’ Sandy’ll be expectin’ me.”
And without waiting for more words, the boy started off on a run.
It was already past ten o’clock, and he had not had a mouthful of
supper, but that was nothing in consideration of the fact that Sandy
had been good to him, and would have helped him, and was, even now,
waiting for him. So, with a light and grateful heart, he hurried on.
He passed beyond the little row of cottages, of which his mother’s was
one, over the hill by a foot-path, and then along the mine car-track to
the breaker. Before him the great building loomed up, like some huge
castle of old, cutting its outlines sharply against the moon-illumined
sky, and throwing a broad black shadow for hundreds of feet to the west.
Through the shadow went Tom, around by the engine-room, where the
watchman’s light was glimmering faintly through the grimy window; out
again into the moonlight, up, by a foot-path, to the summit of another
hill, along by another row of darkened dwellings, to a cottage where a
light was still burning, and there he stopped.
The door opened before he reached it, and a man in shirt-sleeves
stepped out and hailed him:
“Is that you, Tom? An’ did ye find Bennie?”
“Yes, Sandy. I came to tell you we just got home. Found him down in the
south chambers; he tried to come out alone, an’ got lost. So I’ll not
need you, Sandy, with the same thanks as if I did, an’ good-night to
you!”
“Good-nicht till ye, Tom! I’m glad the lad’s safe wi’ the mither. Tom,”
as the boy turned away, “ye’ll not be afeard to be goin’ home alone?”
Tom laughed.
“Do I looked scared, Sandy? Give yourself no fear for me; I’m afraid o’
naught.”
Before Sandy turned in at his door, Tom had disappeared below the brow
of the hill. The loose gravel rolled under his feet as he hurried down,
and once, near the bottom, he slipped and fell.
As he rose, he was astonished to see the figure of a man steal
carefully along in the shadow of the breaker, and disappear around the
corner by the engine-room.
Tom went down cautiously into the shadow, and stopped for a moment in
the track by the loading-place to listen. He thought he heard a noise
in there; something that sounded like the snapping of dry twigs.
The next moment a man came out from under that portion of the breaker,
with his head turned back over his shoulder, muttering, as he advanced
toward Tom,--
“There, Mike, that’s the last job o’ that kind I’ll do for all the
secret orders i’ the warl’. They put it on to me because I’ve got no
wife nor childer, nor ither body to cry their eyes oot, an’ I get i’
the prison for it. But I’ve had the hert o’ me touched the day, Mike,
an’ I canna do the like o’ this again; it’s the las’ time, min’ ye, the
las’ time I--Mike!--why, that’s no’ Mike! Don’t ye speak, lad! don’t ye
whusper! don’t ye stir!”
The man stepped forward, a very giant in size, with a great beard
floating on his breast, and laid his brawny hands on Tom’s shoulders
with a grip that made the lad wince.
Tom did not stir; he was too much frightened for one thing, too much
astonished for another. For, before the man had finished speaking,
there appeared under the loading-place in the breaker a little
flickering light, and the light grew into a flame, and the flame curled
around the coal-black timbers, and sent up little red tongues to lick
the cornice of the long, low roof. Tom was so astounded that he could
not speak, even if he had dared. But this giant was standing over him,
gripping his shoulders in a painful clutch, and saying to him, in a
voice of emphasis and determination,--
“Do ye see me, lad? Do ye hear me? Then I say to ye, tell a single soul
what ye’ve seen here the night, an’ the life o’ ye’s not worth the dust
i’ the road. Whusper a single word o’ it, an’ the Molly Maguires ’ll
tak’ terrible revenge o’ ye’! Noo, then, to your home! Rin! an’ gin ye
turn your head or speak, ye s’all wish ye’d ’a’ been i’ the midst o’
the fire instead.”
With a vigorous push, he sent Tom from him at full speed down the track.
But the boy had not gone far before the curiosity that overtook Lot’s
wife came upon him, and he turned and looked. He was just in time to
see and hear the sleepy watchman open the door of the engine-room, run
out, give one startled look at the flames as they went creeping up the
long slant of roof, and then make the still night echo with his cry of
“Fire!”
Before twenty minutes had passed, the surrounding hills were alive with
people who had come to look upon the burning breaker.
The spectacle was a grand one.
For many minutes the fire played about in the lower part of the
building, among the pockets and the screens, and dashed up against
the base of the shaft-tower like lapping waves. Then the small square
windows, dotting the black surface of the breaker here and there up its
seventy feet of height, began to redden and to glow with the mounting
flames behind them; a column of white smoke broke from the topmost
cornice, little red tongues went creeping up to the very pinnacle of
the tower, and then from the highest point of all a great column of
fire shot far up toward the onlooking stars, and the whole gigantic
building was a single body of roaring, wavering flame.
It burned rapidly and brilliantly, and soon after midnight there was
but a mass of charred ruins covering the ground where once the breaker
stood.
There was little that could be saved; the cars in the loading-place,
the tools in the engine-room, some loose lumber, and the household
effects from a small dwelling-house near by; that was all. But among
the many men who helped to save this little, none labored with such
energetic effort, such daring zeal, such superhuman strength, as the
huge-framed, big-bearded man they called Jack Rennie.
* * * * *
The strike had become general. The streets of the mining towns were
filled with idle, loitering men and boys. The drinking saloons drove
a brisk business, and the merchants feared disaster. Tom had not told
any one as yet of his adventure at the breaker on the night of the
fire. He knew that he ought to disclose his secret; indeed, he felt a
pressing duty upon him to do so in order that the crime might be duly
punished. But the secret order of Molly Maguires was a terror in the
coal regions in those days; the torch, the pistol, and the knife were
the instruments with which it carried out its desperate decrees, and
Tom was absolutely afraid to whisper a word of what he knew, even to
his mother or to Bennie.
But one day the news went out that Jack Rennie had been arrested,
charged with setting fire to the Valley Breaker; and soon afterward a
messenger came to the house of the Widow Taylor, saying that Tom was
wanted immediately in Wilkesbarre at the office of Lawyer Pleadwell.
Tom answered this summons gladly, as it might possibly afford a means
by which he would be compelled to tell what he knew about the fire,
with the least responsibility resting on him for the disclosure. But
he resolved that, in no event, would he speak any thing but the truth.
After he was dressed and brushed to the satisfaction of his careful
mother, Tom went with the messenger to the railroad station, and the
fast train soon brought them into the city of Wilkesbarre, the county
town of Luzerne County.
On one of the streets radiating from the court-house square, they
stopped before a dingy-looking door on which was fastened a sign
reading: “James G. Pleadwell, Attorney-at-Law.”
Tom was taken, first, into the outer room of the law-offices, where
a man sat at a table writing, and two or three other men, evidently
miners, were talking together in a corner; and then, after a few
moments, the door into an inner apartment was opened and he was called
in there. This room was more completely furnished than the outer
one; there was a carpet on the floor, and there were pictures on the
walls; also there were long shelves full of books, all bound alike in
leather, all with red labels near the tops and black labels near the
bottoms of their backs.
At the farther side of the room sat a short, slim, beardless man, with
pale face and restless eyes, whom Tom recognized as having been in
the mine with the visiting strikers the day Bennie was lost; and by a
round centre table sat Lawyer Pleadwell, short and stout, with bristly
mustache and a stubby nose on which rested a pair of gold-rimmed
eye-glasses.
As Tom entered the room, the lawyer regarded him closely, and waving
his hand towards an easy chair, he said,--
“Be seated, my lad. Your name is--a’--let me see”--
“Tom--Thomas Taylor, sir,” answered the boy.
“Well, Tom, you saw the fire at the Valley Breaker?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom; “I guess I was the first one ’at saw it.”
“So I have heard,” said the lawyer, slowly; then, after a pause,--
“Tom have you told to any one what you saw, or whom you saw at the
moment of the breaking out of that fire?”
“I have not, sir,” answered Tom, wondering how the lawyer knew he had
seen any one.
“Do you expect, or desire, to disclose your knowledge?”
“I do,” said Tom; “I ought to a’ told before; I meant to a’ told, but I
didn’t dare. I’d like to tell now.”
Tom was growing bold; he felt that he had kept the secret long enough
and that, now, it must out.
Lawyer Pleadwell twirled his glasses thoughtfully for a few moments,
then placed them deliberately on his nose, and turned straight to Tom.
“Well, Tom,” he said, “we may as well be plain with you. I represent
Jack Rennie, who is charged with firing this breaker, and Mr. Carolan
here is officially connected with the order of Molly Maguires, in
pursuance of whose decree the deed is supposed to have been done. We
have known, for some time, that a boy was present when the breaker was
fired. Last night we learned that you were that boy. Now, what we want
of you is simply this: to keep your knowledge to yourself. This will be
to your own advantage as well as for the benefit of others. Will you do
it?”
To Tom, the case had taken on a new aspect. Instead of being, as
he had supposed, in communication with those who desired to punish
the perpetrators of the crime, he found himself in the hands of the
prisoner’s friends. But his Scotch stubbornness came to the rescue, and
he replied,--
“I can’t do it, sir; it wasn’t right to burn the breaker, an’ the man
’at done it ought to go to jail for it.”
Lawyer Pleadwell inserted a thumb into the arm-hole of his vest, and
poised his glasses carefully in his free hand. He was preparing to
argue the case with Tom.
“Suppose,” said he, “you were a miner, as you hope to be, as your
father was before you; and a brutal and soulless corporation, having
reduced your wages to the starvation-point, while its vaults were
gorged with money, should kick you, like a dog, out of their employ,
when you humbly asked them for enough to keep body and soul together.
Suppose you knew that the laws were made for the rich and against the
poor, as they are, and that your only redress, and a speedy one, would
be to spoil the property of your persecutors till they came to treat
you like a human being, with rights to be respected, as they surely
would, for they fear nothing so much as the torch; would you think it
right for a fellow-workman to deliver you up to their vengeance and
fury for having taught them such a lesson?”
The lawyer placed his glasses on his nose, and leaned forward, eagerly,
towards Tom.
The argument was not without its effect. Tom had long been led to
believe that corporations were tyrannical monsters. But the boy’s
inherent sense of right and wrong was proof against even this specious
plea.
“All the same,” he said, “I can’t make out ’at it’s right to burn a
breaker. Why,” he continued, “you might say the same thing if it’d ’a
been murder.”
Pleadwell saw that he was on the wrong track with this clear-headed boy.
“Well,” he said, settling back in his chair, “if peaceful persuasion
will not avail, I trust you are prepared, in case of disclosure, to
meet whatever the Molly Maguires have in store for you?”
“Yes,” answered Tom, boldly, “I am. I’ve been afraid of ’em, an’ that’s
what’s kept me from tellin’; but I won’t be a coward any more; they can
do what they’re a mind to with me.”
The lawyer was in a quandary, and Carolan shot angry glances at Tom.
Here was a lad who held Jack Rennie’s fate in his hands, and whom
neither fear nor persuasion could move. What was to be done?
Pleadwell motioned to Carolan, and they rose and left the room
together; while Tom sat, with tumultuously beating heart, but with
constantly increasing resolution.
The men were gone but a few moments, and came back with satisfied
looks on their faces.
“I have learned,” said the lawyer, addressing Tom, in a voice laden
with apparent sympathy, “that you have a younger brother who is blind.
That is a sad affliction.”
“Yes, indeed it is,” replied Tom; “yes, indeed!”
“I have learned, also, that there is a possibility of cure, if the eyes
are subjected to proper and timely treatment.”
“Yes, that’s what a doctor told us.”
“What a blessing it would be if sight could be restored to him! what a
delight! What rejoicing there would be in your little household, would
there not?”
“Oh, indeed there would!” cried Tom, “oh, indeed! It’s what we’re
a-thinkin’ of al’ays; it’s what I pray for every night, sir. We’ve been
a-tryin’ to save money enough to do it, but it’s slow a-gettin’ it,
it’s awful slow.”
“A--how much”--Lawyer Pleadwell paused, and twirled his eye-glasses
thoughtfully--“how much would it cost, Tom?”
“Only a hundred dollars, sir; that’s what the doctor said.”
Another pause; then, with great deliberation,--
“Tom, suppose my friend here should see fit to place in your hands,
to-day, the sum of one hundred dollars, to be used in your brother’s
behalf; could you return the favor by keeping to yourself the knowledge
you possess concerning the origin of the fire at the breaker?”
The hot blood surged up into Tom’s face, his heart pounded like a
hammer against his breast, his head was in a whirl.
A hundred dollars! and sight for Bennie! No lies to be told--only to
keep quiet--and sight for Bennie! Would it be very wrong? But, oh, to
think of Bennie in the joy of seeing! The temptation was terrible.
Stronger, less affectionate natures than Tom’s might well have yielded.