He usually made from eight to ten round trips a day; stopping at noon, or thereabouts, to eat the dinner with which the Widow Maloney had filled his pail.  All the driver boys on that level gathered at the head of the plane to eat their dinners, and, during the noon-hour, the place was alive with shouts and songs and pranks and chattering without limit.  These boys were older, stronger, ruder than those in the screen-room; but they were no less human and good-hearted; only one needed to look beneath the rough exterior into their real natures.  There were eight of them who took trips in by Ralph’s heading, but, for the last half-mile of his route, he was the only driver boy.  It was a lonesome half-mile too, with no working chambers along it, and Ralph was always glad when he reached the end of it.  There was, usually, plenty of life, though, up in the workings to which he distributed his cars.  One could look up from the air-way and see the lights dancing in the darkness at the breast of every chamber.  There was always the sharp tap, tap of the drill, the noise of the sledge falling heavily on the huge lumps of coal, sometimes a sudden rush of air against one’s face, followed by a dull report and crash that told of the firing of a blast, and now and then a miner’s laborer would come running a loaded car down to the heading or go pushing an empty one back up the chamber.

There was a laborer up in one of these chambers with whom Ralph had formed quite a friendship.  His name was Michael Conway.  He was young and strong-limbed, with huge hairy arms, a kind face, and a warm heart.

He had promised to teach Ralph the art of breaking and loading coal.  He expected, he said, to have a chamber himself after a while, and then he would take the boy on as a laborer.  Indeed, Ralph had already learned many things from him about the use of tools and the handling of coal and the setting of props.  But he did not often have an opportunity to see Conway at work.  The chamber in which the young man was laboring was the longest one in the tier, and the loaded car was usually at the foot of it when Ralph arrived with his trip of lights; so that he had only to run the empty car up into the air-way a few feet, take on the loaded one, and start back toward the plane.

But one afternoon, when he came up with his last trip for the day, he found no load at the foot of Conway’s chamber, and, after waiting a few minutes, he went up to the face to investigate.  He found Conway there alone.  The miner for whom the young man worked had fallen sick and had gone out earlier than usual, so his laborer had finished the blast at which the employer had been at work.  It was a blast of top-coal, and therefore it took longer to get it down and break it up.  This accounted for the delay.

“Come up here with ye,” said Conway to the boy; “I want to show ye something.”

Ralph climbed up on to the shelf of coal at the breast of the chamber, and the man, tearing away a few pieces of slate and a few handfuls of dirt from a spot in the upper face, disclosed an opening in the wall scarcely larger than one’s head.  A strong current of air coursed through it, and when Conway put his lamp against it the flame was extinguished in a moment.