“Why, how strange you look, Uncle Billy; an’ you’re a-laughin’ at me—­what! does she?  Well, I’ll go to her just as soon as I get out, just as soon.  How did she find it out?  I was goin’ to be the first to tell her.  I’m glad she knows it, though.”

After a moment he continued:—­

“Oh, no, Uncle Billy; I shouldn’t ever do that, I couldn’t.  You’ve been too good to me.  You’ve been awful good to me, Uncle Billy—­awful good.”

Again silence fell.  Thick darkness, like a veil, wrapped the unconscious child in its folds.  Black walls and winding galleries surrounded him, the “valley of the shadow” lay beyond him, but on his breast he bore the declaration of his birth, and in his heart he felt that “peace of God which passeth understanding.”

Down in the darkness the water dripped; up in the earth’s sky the stars were out and the moon was shining.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A STROKE OF LIGHTNING.

It was a hot day at Burnham Breaker.  The sun of midsummer beat fiercely upon the long and sloping roofs and against the coal-black sides of the giant building.

Down in the engine-room, where there was no air stirring, and the vapor of steam hung heavily in the atmosphere, the heat was almost insupportable.

The engineer, clothed lightly as he was, fairly dripped with perspiration.  The fireman, with face and neck like a lobster, went out, at intervals, and plunged his hands and his head too into the stream of cool water sent out from the mine by the laboring pumps.

Up in the screen-room, the boys were sweltering above their chutes, choking with the thick dust, wondering if the afternoon would never be at an end.

Bachelor Billy, pushing the cars out from the head, said to himself that he was glad Ralph was no longer picking slate.  It was better that he should work in the mines.  It was cool there in summer and warm in winter, and it was altogether more comfortable for the boy than it could be in the breaker; neither was it any more dangerous, in his opinion, than it was among the wheels and rollers of the screen-room.  He had labored in the mines himself, until the rheumatism came and put a stop to his under-ground toil.  He mourned greatly the necessity that compelled him to give up this kind of work.  It is hard for a miner to leave his pillars and his chambers, his drill and powder-can and fuse, and to seek other occupation on the surface of the earth.  The very darkness and danger that surround him at his task hold him to it with an unaccountable fascination.

But Bachelor Billy had a good place here at the breaker.  It was not hard work that he was doing.  Robert Burnham had given him the position ten years and more ago.

Even on this hot mid-summer day, the heat was less where he was than in any other part of the building.  A cool current came up the shaft and kept the air stirring about the head, and the loaded mine-cars rose to the platform, dripping cold water from their sides, and that was very refreshing to the eye as well as to the touch.