But when he came among them that morning, looking so thin, and pale, and old, there was not a boy in all the waiting crowd who had the heart or hardihood to say an unpleasant word to him or to give utterance to a jest at his expense.

They all spoke kindly to him, and welcomed him back.  Some of them did it very awkwardly indeed, and with much embarrassment, but they made him to understand, somehow, that they were glad to see him, and that he still held his place among them as a companion and a friend.  It was very good in them, Ralph thought, very good indeed; he could scarcely keep the tears back for gratitude.

He took his accustomed bench in the screen-room, and bent to his task in the old way; but not with the old, light heart and willing fingers.  He had thought never to do this again.  He had thought that life held for him some higher, brighter, less laborious work.  He had thought to gain knowledge, to win fame, to satisfy ambition.  But the storm came with its fierce blasts of disappointment and despair, and when it had passed, hope and joy were engulfed in the ruins it left behind it.  Henceforth there remained nothing but this, this toilsome bending over streams of flowing coal, to-day, to-morrow, next week, next year.  And in the remote future nothing better; nothing but the laborer’s pick and shovel, or, at best, the miner’s drill and powder-can and fuse.  In all the coming years there was not one bright spot to which he could look, this day, with hope.  The day itself seemed very long to him, very long indeed and very tiresome.  The heat grew burdensome; the black dust filled his throat and lungs, the ceaseless noise became almost unendurable; the stream of coal ran down and down in a dull monotony that made him faint and dizzy, and the bits of blue sky seen from the open windows never yet had seemed to him to be so far and far away.

But the day had an end at last, as all days must have, and Ralph came down from his seat in the dingy castle to walk with Bachelor Billy to their home.

They went by a path that led through green fields, where the light of the setting sun, falling on the grass and daisies, changed them to a golden yellow as one looked on them from the distance.

When they turned the corner of the village street, they were surprised to see horses and a carriage standing in front of Mrs. Maloney’s cottage.  It was an unaccustomed sight.  There was a lady there talking to Mrs. Maloney, and she had a little girl by her side.  At the second look, Ralph recognized them as Mrs. Burnham and Mildred.  Then the lady descended from her carriage and stood at the door waiting for Bachelor Billy and the boy to come to her.  But Ralph, looking down at his black hands and soiled clothing, hesitated and stopped in the middle of the road.  He knew that his face, too, was so covered with coal-dust as to be almost unrecognizable.  He felt that he ought not to appear before Mrs. Burnham in this guise.