“I have not done enough yet to redeem myself for the years that I stood as the barrier to the poor getting their deserts,” he declares.

But the election shows that he is recognized as a faithful friend of the people.  At the Conference it is believed he will win recognition for the claims of the miners, for justice, and for the Federal enforcement of the laws of common safety in the mines.

The ten months that have passed since the afternoon he won the case against the Magyar’s widow, have been the most momentous in his life.  They have taken him out of the service of a soulless Company and put him in the position of leader of a million miners.

BOOK II.

The Syndicate Incorporates.

CHAPTER VII.

An anti-trust conference.

From the hour that Trueman was selected as a delegate to the great Anti-Trust Conference to convene in the city of Chicago, he has devoted his hours, day and night, to study.  In making his advent in the conference, he enters the arena of national politics; he means to go prepared.  Martha has prevailed upon him to accept the nomination as a candidate for the State of Pennsylvania, and he has been elected by the unanimous vote of the Unions.  This exhibition of confidence on the part of the toilers of the state has made a deep impression on him, and has fixed his resolve to do something that will be worthy of his constituents.

The sudden transition he has undergone from being the staunch supporter of the coal barons, to becoming their bitterest opponent, has left many of the opinion that he is working some deep scheme for the undoing of the unionists.  Nor is this opinion confined to any small number.  “He changed his views too quickly,” is the general sentiment in the ranks of the small unions where Trueman is not personally known.  This lurking suspicion was what had operated strongly at first against securing Trueman’s consent to be a candidate.  Martha has worked quietly, assiduously, among the men she knew, and who placed absolute faith in her advice.  She has been the direct means of bringing about his election.

Now he is to leave her, and must face the supreme opportunity of his life.

It is not without a pang that he bids her farewell.  She has come to be a source of great comfort to him since his enlistment in the ranks of the humble.  The schoolday acquaintance has been renewed.  He has learned to appreciate the fact that he was the cause of her having donned the dress of the sisterhood.  His ambition to rise in the world made it impossible for him to yield to the dictates of his heart and the mental vista that opened before him at the close of his college course, did not have her in it.  The woman he saw there must be the favorite of fortune.  He had selfishly abandoned certain love for possible fortune and in the active life to which he was at once introduced, all thoughts of Martha had been driven from his mind.