“I found somethin’ up there, Jasper,” said Ralph, as he sat down on the bench and began to pat the beast’s neck again, “somethin’ wonderful; I wish I could tell you so you could understand it; it’s too bad you can’t, Jasper; I know you’d be glad.”

The mule seemed to recognize the pleasantness of the lad’s voice and to enjoy it, and for a long time Ralph sat there petting him and talking to him.

Finally, he became aware that the air about him was growing to be very bad.  It made him feel sick and dizzy, and caused his heart to beat rapidly.

He knew that he must go farther in.  He thought, however, to make an attempt to get out toward the shaft first.  It might be that it had grown clearer out there, it might be that the rescuers were already working down toward him.  He started rapidly down the heading, but before he had gone half-way to the head of the plane, the smoke and the foul air were so dense and deadly that he had to stop and to crawl away from it on his hands and knees.  He was greatly exhausted when he reached the air-way door again, and he sat on the bench for a long time to rest and to recover.

But he knew that it was dangerous to remain there now, and, taking the can of oil with him, he started slowly up the heading.  He did not know how soon he should get back here, and when the oil in his lamp should give out again he desired to be able to renew it.

The mule was following closely behind him.  It was a great comfort, too, to have a living being with him for company.  He might have been shut up here alone, and that would have been infinitely worse.

At the point where the branch leading to the new chambers left the main heading, Ralph turned in, following his accustomed route.  It seemed to him that he ought to go to places with which he was familiar.

He trudged along through the half-mile of gang-way that he had always found so lonely when he was at work, stopping now and then to rest.  For, although he walked very slowly, he grew tired very easily.  He felt that he was not getting into a purer atmosphere either.  The air around him seemed to lack strength and vitality; and when, at last, he reached the tier of chambers that it had been his duty to supply with cars, he was suffering from dizziness, from shortness of breath, and from rapid beating of the heart.

At the foot of Conway’s chamber Ralph found a seat.  He was very weak and tired and his whole frame was in a tremor.

He began to recall all that he had heard and read about people being suffocated in the mines; all the stories that had ever been told to him about miners being shut in by accident and poisoned with foul air, or rescued at the point of death.  He knew that his own situation was a critical one.  He knew that, with the shaft crowded full of wreckage and giving no passage to the air, the entire mine would eventually become filled with poisonous gases.  He knew that his present physical condition was due to the foulness of the atmosphere he was breathing.  He felt that the situation was becoming rapidly more alarming.  The only question now was as to how long this vitiated air would support life.  Still, his courage did not give way.  He had strong hope that he would yet be rescued, and he struggled to hold fast to his hope.