The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, the big plant was silent and deserted. Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the Woodlawn porch. "You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this morning." "What was in the papers?" "About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday." Tom started as if he had been stung. "Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to Louisville!" "Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all." Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?" "The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out--made 'em quit. We're done, Buddy." Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was standing in the doorway, thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone. As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping in darkness and fell before he could reach her. It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind. Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to revive her. "I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the man. But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings. What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken heart: "_Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son_!" XXI GILGAL In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the _Morning Tribune_ that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down.