"Hogan," called the dump-boss, "go down to the powder house and bring up a box of persuaders." The slag was hard and needed blasting. Hogan looked up, said "What?" and before the dump boss could speak again Hogan had started down and around the dump to the powder house, near the saloon. He went into the powder house, and then came out, carrying a heavy box. At the sidewalk edge, Hogan, who was yawning, stumbled--they saw him stumble, two men standing in the door of the Hot Dog saloon a block away, and they told the people at the inquest that that was the last they saw. A great explosion followed. The men about the dump huddled for a long minute under freight cars, then crawled out, and the dump boss called the roll; Hogan was missing. In an hour they came and took Mrs. Hogan to the undertaker's room near the smelter--where so many women had stood beside death in its most awful forms. She had her baby in her arms, with another plucking at her skirts and she stood mutely beside the coffin that they would not open. For she knew what other women knew about the smelter, knew that when they will not open the coffin, it must not be opened. So the little procession rode to the Hogan home, where Laura Van Dorn was waiting. Perhaps it was because she could not see the face of the dead that it seemed unreal to the widow. But she did not moan nor cry--after the first scream that came when she knew the worst. Stolidly she went through her tasks until after the funeral. Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing for years: "Mrs. Van Dorn, I'm going to do something you won't like." To Laura's questioning eyes Violet answered: "I know your ma, or some one else has told you all about me--but," she shut her mouth tightly and said slowly: "But no matter what they say--I'm going to the Judge; he's got to make the railroad company pay and pay well. It's all I've got on earth--for the children. We have three dollars in my pocketbook and will have to wait until the fifteenth before I get his last month's wages, and I know they'll dock him up to the very minute of the day--that day! I wouldn't do it for anything else on earth, Mrs. Van Dorn--wild horses couldn't drag me there--but I'm going to the Judge--for the children. He can help." So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off, Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge's office. She would have told him her story--but he interrupted: "Yes, Violet--I read it in the _Times_. But what can I do--you know I'm not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the railroad, and you know, Violet, he assumed the risk. What do they offer you?"