“I have not, sir,” answered Tom, wondering how the lawyer knew he had seen any one.
“Do you expect, or desire, to disclose your knowledge?”
“I do,” said Tom; “I ought to a’ told before; I meant to a’ told, but I didn’t dare. I’d like to tell now.”
Tom was growing bold; he felt that he had kept the secret long enough and that, now, it must out.
Lawyer Pleadwell twirled his glasses thoughtfully for a few moments, then placed them deliberately on his nose, and turned straight to Tom.
“Well, Tom,” he said, “we may as well be plain with you. I represent Jack Rennie, who is charged with firing this breaker, and Mr. Carolan here is officially connected with the order of Molly Maguires, in pursuance of whose decree the deed is supposed to have been done. We have known, for some time, that a boy was present when the breaker was fired. Last night we learned that you were that boy. Now, what we want of you is simply this: to keep your knowledge to yourself. This will be to your own advantage as well as for the benefit of others. Will you do it?”
To Tom, the case had taken on a new aspect. Instead of being, as he had supposed, in communication with those who desired to punish the perpetrators of the crime, he found himself in the hands of the prisoner’s friends. But his Scotch stubbornness came to the rescue, and he replied,—
“I can’t do it, sir; it wasn’t right to burn the breaker, an’ the man ’at done it ought to go to jail for it.”
Lawyer Pleadwell inserted a thumb into the arm-hole of his vest, and poised his glasses carefully in his free hand. He was preparing to argue the case with Tom.
“Suppose,” said he, “you were a miner, as you hope to be, as your father was before you; and a brutal and soulless corporation, having reduced your wages to the starvation-point, while its vaults were gorged with money, should kick you, like a dog, out of their employ, when you humbly asked them for enough to keep body and soul together. Suppose you knew that the laws were made for the rich and against the poor, as they are, and that your only redress, and a speedy one, would be to spoil the property of your persecutors till they came to treat you like a human being, with rights to be respected, as they surely would, for they fear nothing so much as the torch; would you think it right for a fellow-workman to deliver you up to their vengeance and fury for having taught them such a lesson?”