“Ralph!” he exclaimed, “Ralph, why have you done this?”

“I couldn’t help it, sir,” replied the boy; “I had to come.  Please don’t send me back.”

“But it’s a desperate trip.  These men are taking their lives in their hands.”

“I know it, sir; but they ain’t one o’ them whose life is worth so little as mine.  They’ve all got folks to live an’ work for, an’ I ain’t.  I’ll go where they don’t dare.  Please let me help!”

The men who were clustered on the carriage looked down on the boy in mute astonishment.  His slight figure was drawn up to its full height; his little hands were tightly clenched; out from his brown eyes shone the fire of resolution.  Some latent spirit of true knighthood had risen in his breast, had quenched all the coward in his nature, and impelled him, in that one moment that called for sacrifice and courage, to a deed as daring and heroic as any that the knights of old were ever prompted to perform.  To those who looked upon him thus, the dust and rags that covered him were blotted out, the marks of pain and poverty and all his childish weaknesses had disappeared, and it seemed to them almost as though a messenger from God were standing in their midst.

But Robert Burnham saw something besides this in the child’s face; he saw a likeness to himself that startled him.  Men see things in moments of sublimity to which at all other times their eyes are blinded.  He thought of Craft’s story; he thought of the boy’s story; he compared them; a sudden hope seized him, a conviction broke upon his mind like a flash of light.

This boy was his son.  For the moment, all other thoughts, motives, desires were blotted from his mind.  His desperate errand was lost to sight.  The imperilled miners were forgotten.

“Ralph!” he cried, seizing the boy’s hand in both of his; “Ralph, I have found you!”

But the child looked up in wonder, and the men who stood by did not know what it meant.

The carriage struck the floor of the mine and they all stepped off.  The shock at stopping brought Burnham to himself.  This was no time, no place to recognize the lad and take him to his heart.  He would do that—­afterward.  Duty, with a stern voice, was calling to him now.

“Men,” he said, “are you ready?  Here, soak the aprons; Ralph, take this; now then, come on!”

Up the heading, in single file, they walked swiftly, swinging their safety-lamps in their hands, or holding them against their breasts.  They knew that up in the chambers their comrades were lying prostrate and in pain.  They knew that the spaces through which they must pass to reach them were filled with poisonous gases, and that in those regions death lurked in every “entrance” and behind every “pillar.”  But they hurried on, saying little, fearing little, hoping much, as they plunged ahead into the blackness, on their humane but desperate errand.