On the further bank, the groups of breakers and foundries loom up as vague shadow creations. From fifty chimney mouths thick black smoke curls unceasingly; now soaring to a considerable height, now driven down to earth by fitful gusts of wind. In their sinuous course these smoke-clouds resemble the genii of fable, who spread over the earth carrying death and devastation. In sharp contrast to this picture is the Avenue of Opulence on the side of the river which boasts of the Esplanade. Here is a line of fifty palatial residences; the homes of the owners of a hundred mines and factories and the task-masters of fifty thousand men, their wives and their progeny. Clustered about the breakers and furnaces are the squalid huts and ramshackle cottages of the operatives; there too, a little removed from the river are the caves in which the Huns and Scandinavians dwell, even as their prehistoric ancestors dwelt before the light of civilization dawned. Nero thrumming his violin from the vantage point of the crowning hill of Rome, had no such portraiture of the degradation of humanity as that which the Magnates nightly view from their balconies. A stranger would be struck with surprise that the thousands should be huddled in dens that wild animals would find uninhabitable, while the sons of greed and avarice flaunt their trappings of mammon from the hilltops. This is the arena in which is to be enacted a scene of this great drama. The actors, the audience are gathering. Mingled sounds of strange nature are on the air. The murmur always present where multitudes are assembled runs as an undertone; the sharp notes of frightened women and terrified children rise as the tones of an oratorio; steady, full, vibrant are the sounds of the men's voices. On the countenances of the men can be read the exultation of their hearts, that at least one of their tyrants has encountered his Nemesis. Faces here and there are wreathed in smiles, as though their possessors were hastening to a fete. Some are grave, for the thought of the retribution that the Magnates will demand, and which they knew so well how to secure, is enough to bring a pallor to the cheek. There are men in the eddying thousands who have felt the hot lead of Latimer and Hazleton burn into their backs and the recollection makes them shudder. They are again upon a highway, but is this a protection against the violence of their masters? They are now, as then, unarmed, but is this a safeguard against the rifles of the hirelings? From the bridge that connects the shores of the river, to the mansion of the Coal King, is a distance of two miles. The broad avenue affords an excellent concourse and down it the throng fairly runs. They traverse the distance in twenty minutes.