"What do you say, Tom?" Norman asked. The old miner glared at the last culprit and his grim mouth tightened: "Wall, you kin do as ye please, but any man that'll abuse a hoss will commit murder. I'd put the fust one in the cow lot to shovellin' compost. This one I'd quietly lynch--no public rumpus about it--jest take 'im down by the beach, hang 'im to one of them posts on the pier, shoot 'im full of holes, and drop 'im into the sea to be sure he don't come back to life." Norman conferred with Barbara a moment and rendered the decision: "Mr. Foreman, the first man is transferred from the field machinery to the compost-heap in the barnyard. The second man who disabled the horses will assist in cleaning the sewers. Their wages will remain the same as before." A round of applause greeted this decision. The Bard renewed his attack with unusual zeal. Standing before the court and shaking his long hair he cried: "At last the climax of tyranny! Two comrades condemned without a jury and without defense! I congratulate you. In one day you have established an aristocracy of filth and created a penal colony without a hearing or appeal. We are making progress." The old miner grunted, Barbara smiled tenderly at Norman, and the court adjourned. CHAPTER XIX SOME TROUBLES IN HEAVEN Norman found it necessary for the executive council to sit continuously for the adjustment of disputes and the settlement of new problems which arose at every step of progress in the new moral world. He had condemned the sins of the old world of capitalism with cocksure certainty. Now that he had been made a supreme judge with power to adjust the rights and wrongs of his fellow man, he was appalled at the magnitude of the task of substituting an ideal for the reign of natural law under which civilization had been slowly evolved. There were two men in the Brotherhood whom he grew early to hate with cordial, thorough, murderous hatred--Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, who always denounced every decision as unjust, and a tall, hooked-nosed, stoop-shouldered, scholarly looking man named Diggs, who invariably sat near him and at every conceivable opportunity asked questions. These questions were always put in an innocent, friendly way, but when Diggs looked at him through his gleaming spectacles Norman always got the impression that an imp of the devil had suddenly popped up through the floor. The first day after the general assignment of work Diggs rose before the council, adjusted his glasses, and drew a piece of paper from his pocket. Norman knew before he spoke that the document bristled with questions. Diggs's glasses had always fascinated him, but to-day they seemed of unusual thickness and enormous size, and their concave surfaces seemed to flash light from a thousand angles. Diggs adjusted them on his hook-nose with deliberation and glanced carefully over his notes before speaking. Norman turned to Barbara with a sigh.