[Illustration: ONE OF THE TRAITORS.] It was announced that Judge Paxson would hear in person the application of any of the accused strikers for bail; that when the cases came before the grand jury he would instruct the jurymen as to what constitutes treason under the statutes of Pennsylvania, and that, if the cases should be brought to trial, he would sit on the bench in the court of oyer and terminer and try them himself. In short, Edward H. Paxson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, was master of the situation. The court of last resort had been by a Frickian turn of the wrist, converted into a court of preliminary resort, intermediate resort and all other known varieties of resort, and the strikers were led to understand accordingly that with Paxson armed to the teeth and ready to bring them to bay at all points, they might as well throw up the sponge at once and be done with it. Detectives Farrell and Mills, assisted by a half dozen deputy sheriffs, were detailed to capture the defendants named in Beltzhoover's information. The task was not an easy one, for most of the reputed "traitors," realizing the difficulty of procuring bail, went into hiding and their friends took care to throw the officers off the track. Five of the men--Thomas Crawford, George Rylands, T. W. Brown, W. H. Baird and John Dierken--were caught on Friday, the day on which the warrant for their arrest was issued. On Saturday, Attorneys Brennen and Cox went before Judge Paxson with a petition for the admission of the accused to bail. Messrs. Burleigh and Knox were called in, and, after a consultation, the Chief Justice made an order authorizing the release of any of the defendants on $10,000 bail at the discretion of any judge of the oyer and terminer court. Judges Kennedy and Porter heard the applications, but rejected the bondsmen offered except in the case of William Baird. Despite the supposedly sacred character of the supreme bench, criticism of Judge Paxson's extraordinary action was freely indulged in by the members of the Pittsburgh bar and reproduced in the public press. Hardly a voice was raised in commendation of the Chief Justice's arbitrary interference, and the consensus of legal opinion, as mirrored in the newspapers, was to the effect that the disturbance at Homestead, being a purely local affair and directed against a private corporation, could not be construed as treason against the state.