Job shuddered at the thought. Then he heard Dan chuckle over him. He "'lowed the biggest fun would be to see that pious fraud beg for mercy." What if Dan knew he was listening, with only a board partition between them! Job hardly dared to breathe. It was getting uncomfortably near dawn when Job heard another owl's hoot and stole past Pat Rooney up to the rear door of the old stone office, which opened softly in a few minutes as he gave the well-known private tap of the clerks. What a wretched, haggard lot of men rose excitedly to meet him! He hushed them to silence, told his story, and bade them rest and wait a few hours. Troop A would surely be here. * * * * * It was daybreak, the dawn of the Fourth of July, when the sound of a bugle aroused the miners of the Yellow Jacket. Some thought it was some patriotic Yankee, but the clang, clang, of the old bell at the stone tower, the calls of the sentries, the rush of hundreds of half-dressed, excited men down the street, told everyone that trouble was in the air. It was all done so quickly that the miners hardly knew where they were. The guards were on the run, and a troop of cavalry, with a solid front, stood facing the yelling, yet terrified, mob of men who blockaded lower Main street. It was only a hundred against five hundred men; but it was order, discipline, authority, against disorder, tumult and a mob. All rules were forgotten, all their plans went for naught. Dan yelled in vain. O'Donnell grew red in the face as he screamed orders. "Forward, march!" rang out the captain's voice, and a hundred sabers rattled and a hundred horses started, and five hundred terror-stricken men, each forgetful of all but himself, started in a panic to retreat. From the open door of the office, deserted at the first alarm by the guards, the imprisoned officers of the company saw the mob come surging up the street. Before noon the Yellow Jacket was a military camp. The miners were the prisoners, disarmed, a helpless crowd, the larger part already ashamed of having been influenced by such a man as O'Donnell. Before nightfall the men had personally signed an agreement to go to work on the morrow at the old terms, and were allowed to depart to their homes. The saloons were emptied of their liquors and closed until military law should be relaxed, and the ringleaders were on their way to the county jail at Gold City. The strike was over without bloodshed, and when the men came to their sober senses, went back to their tasks, and saw the folly of it all--saw how they had been duped by demagogues--they were grateful that somebody had dared to end the strike, and Job was the hero of the hour. The reaction that sweeps over mob-mind swept him back into his place as the idol of their hearts.