He gave one look up the long incline, gathered his burden to his breast and started upward.  The slope was not a steep one.  There were many in that region that were steeper; but to a man in the last stage of physical exhaustion, forcing his tired muscles and his pain-racked body to carry him and his helpless charge up its slippery way, it was little less than precipitous.

It was long too, very long, and in many places it was rough with dislodged props and caps and fallen rock.

Many and many a time Bachelor Billy fell prone upon the sloping floor, but, though he was powerless to save himself, though he met in his own body the force of every blow, he always held the child out of harm’s way.

He began to wonder, at last, if he could ever get the lad to the surface; if, within fifty rods of the blessed outer air, he would not after all have to lie down and die with Ralph in his arms.

But as soon as such thoughts came to him he brought his tremendous will and magnificent courage to the rescue, and arose and struggled on.

The boy had not spoken since the journey began, nor had he opened his eyes.  He was still unconscious, but he was breathing; his heart was beating, there was life in his body, and that was all that could be asked or hoped for.

At last! oh, at last!  The straight, steep, dreadful half mile of slope was at Bachelor Billy’s back.  He stood out once more in the free and open air.  Under his feet were the grass and flowers and yielding soil; over his head were the shining stars, now paling in the east; below him lay the fair valley and the sleeping town clothed lightly in the morning mist; and in his arms he still held the child who had thought never again to draw breath under the starry sky or in the dewy air.  There came a faint breeze, laden with all the fragrance of the young morning, and it swept Ralph’s cheek so gently that the very sweetness of it made his eyes to open.

He looked at the reddening east, at the setting stars still glowing in the western sky, at the city church spires rising out of the sea of silver mist far down below him, and then at last up into the dear old face and the tear-wet eyes above him, and he said:  “Uncle Billy, oh, Uncle Billy! don’t you think it’s beautiful?  I wish—­I wish my mother could see it.”

“Aye, lad! she s’all look upon it wi’ ye, mony’s the sweet mornin’ yet, an it please the good God.”

The effort to look and to speak had overpowered the weary child, and he sank back again into unconsciousness.

Then began the journey home.  Not to the old cottage; that was Ralph’s home no longer, but to the home of wealth and beauty now, to the mansion yonder in the city where the mother was waiting for her boy.

Aye! the mother was waiting for her boy.

They had sent a messenger on horseback shortly after midnight to tell her that the lad’s tracks had been found in the old mine, that all the men at hand had started in there to make the search more thorough, that by daylight the child would be in her arms, that possibly, oh! by the merest possibility, he might still be living.