But then, as they were on their way home, tragedy fell upon them. Hearing a step behind them, Mary turned and looked; then catching Hal by the arm, she drew him into the shadows at the side, whispering to him to be silent. The bent figure of a man went past them, lurching from side to side. When he had turned and gone into the house, Mary said, “It's my father. He's ugly when he's like that.” And Hal could hear her quick breathing in the darkness.
So that was Mary's trouble—the difficulty in her home life to which she had referred at their first meeting! Hal understood many things in a flash—why her home was bare of ornament, and why she did not invite her company to sit down. He stood silent, not knowing what to say. Before he could find the word, Mary burst out, “Oh, how I hate O'Callahan, that sells the stuff to my father! His home with plenty to eat in it, and his wife dressin' in silk and goin' down to mass every Sunday, and thinkin' herself too good for a common miner's daughter! Sometimes I think I'd like to kill them both.”
“That wouldn't help much,” Hal ventured.
“No, I know—there'd only be some other one in his place. Ye got to do more than that, to change things here. Ye got to get after them that make money out of O'Callahan.”
So Mary's mind was groping for causes! Hal had thought her excitement was due to humiliation, or to fear of a scene of violence when she reached home; but she was thinking of the deeper aspects of this terrible drink problem. There was still enough unconscious snobbery in Hal Warner for him to be surprised at this phenomenon in a common miner's daughter; and so, as at their first meeting, his pity was turned to intellectual interest.
“They'll stop the drink business altogether some day,” he said. He had not known that he was a Prohibitionist; he had become one suddenly!
“Well,” she answered, “they'd best stop it soon, if they don't want to be too late. 'Tis a sight to make your heart sick to see the young lads comin' home staggerin', too drunk even to fight.”
Hal had not had time to see much of this aspect of North Valley. “They sell to boys?” he asked.
“Sure, who's to care? A boy's money's as good as a man's.”
“But I should think the company—”
“The company lets the saloon-buildin'—that's all the company cares.”
“But they must care something about the efficiency of their hands!”
“Sure, there's plenty more where they come from. When ye can't work, they fire ye, and that's all there is to it.”
“And is it so easy to get skilled men?”
“It don't take much skill to get out coal. The skill is in keepin' your bones whole—and if you can stand breakin' 'em, the company can stand it.”
They had come to the little cabin. Mary stood for a moment in silence. “I'm talkin' bitt............