What was the force that kept men at such a task? Was it a sense of duty?
Did they understand that society had to have coal and that some one had
to do the "dirty work" of providing it? Did they have a vision of a
future, great and wonderful, which was to grow out of their ill-requited
toil? Or were they simply fools or cowards, submitting blindly, because
they had not the wit nor the will to do otherwise? Curiosity held him,
he wanted to understand the inner souls of these silent and patient
armies which through the ages have surrendered their lives to other
men's control.



SECTION 10.

Hal was coming to know these people; to see them no longer as a mass,
to be despised or pitied in bulk, but as individuals, with individual
temperaments and problems, exactly like people in the world of the
sunlight. Mary Burke and Tim Rafferty, Cho the Korean and Madvik the
Croatian--one by one these individualities etched themselves into the
foreground of Hal's picture, making it a thing of life, moving him to
sympathy and fellowship. Some of these people, to be sure, were stunted
and dulled to a sordid ugliness of soul and body--but on the other hand,
some of them were young, and had the light of hope in their hearts, and
the spark of rebellion.

There was "Andy," a boy of Greek parentage; Androkulos was his right
name--but it was too much to expect any one to get that straight in a
coal-camp. Hal noticed him at the store, and was struck by his beautiful
features, and the mournful look in his big black eyes. They got to
talking, and Andy made the discovery that Hal had not spent all his time