Hal had requested Mary to say nothing about his purpose, until after he had a chance to judge for himself. So now the girl inquired about Mrs. Edstrom. There was no news, the man answered; she was lying in a stupor, as usual. Dr. Barrett had come again, but all he could do was to give her morphine. No one could do any more, the doctor declared. “Sure, he’d not know it if they could!” sniffed Mary. “He’s not such a bad one, when he’s sober,” said Edstrom, patiently. “And how often is that?” sniffed Mary again. She added, by way of explanation to Hal, “He’s a cousin of the super.” Things were better here than in some places, said Edstrom. At Harvey’s Run, where he had worked, a man had got his eye hurt, and had lost it through the doctor’s instrument slipping; broken arms and legs had been set wrong, and either the men had to go through life as cripples, or go elsewhere and have the bones re-broken and reset, It was like everything else--the doctor was a part of the company machine, and if you had too much to say about him, it was down the canyon with you. You not only had a dollar a month taken out of your pay, but if you were injured, and he came to attend you, he would charge whatever extra he pleased. “And you have to pay?” asked Hal. “They take it off your account,” said the old man. “Sometimes they take it when he’s done nothin’ at all,” added Mary. “They charged Mrs. Zamboni twenty-five dollars for her last baby--and Dr. Barrett never set foot across her door till three hours after the baby was in my arms!” SECTION 4. The talk went on. Wishing to draw the old man out, Hal spoke of various troubles of the miners, and at last he suggested that the remedy might be found in a union. Edstrom’s dark eyes studied him, and then turned to Mary. “Joe’s all right,” said the girl, quickly. “You can trust him.” Edstrom made no direct answer to this, but remarked that he had once been in a strike. He was a marked man, now, and could only stay in the camp so long as he attended strictly to his own affairs. The part he had played in the big strike had never been forgotten; the bosses had let him work again, partly because they had needed him at a rush time, and partly because the pit-boss happened to be a personal friend. “Tell him about the big strike,” said Mary. “He’s new in this district.”