“Shout,” he said hoarsely; and the boy shouted, though it was somewhat feeble.

A moment later, he gave a shout of an entirely different kind.

“There is a light!” he cried.

The sound revived Keith’s fainting energies, and he tried to muster his flagging strength.  The boy shouted again, and in response there came back, strangely flattened, the shrill cry of a woman.  Keith staggered forward with Bluffy, at times holding himself up by the side-timbers.  He was conscious of a light and of voices, but was too exhausted to know more.  If he could only keep the man and the boy above water until assistance came!  He summoned his last atom of strength.

“Hold tight to the timbers, Hennson,” he cried; “I am going.”

The rest was a confused dream.  He was conscious for a moment of the weight being lifted from him, and he was sinking into the water as if into a soft couch.  He thought some one clutched him, but he knew nothing more.

* * * * *

Terpsichore was out on the street when the rumor of the accident reached her.  Any accident always came home to her, and she was prompt to do what she could to help, in any case.  But this was Mr. Keith’s mine, and rumor had it that he was among the lost.  Terpsichore was not attired for such an emergency; when she went on the streets, she still wore some of her old finery, though it was growing less and less of late.  She always acted quickly.  Calling to a barkeeper who had come to his front door on hearing the news, to bring her brandy immediately, she dashed into a dry-goods store near by and got an armful of blankets, and when the clerk, a stranger just engaged in the store, made some question about charging them to her, she tore off her jewelled watch and almost flung it at the man.

“Take that, idiot!  Men are dying,” she said.  “I have not time to box your jaws.”  And snatching up the blankets, she ran out, stopped a passing buggy, and flinging them into it, sprang in herself.  With a nod of thanks to the barkeeper, who had brought out several bottles of brandy, she snatched the reins from the half-dazed driver, and heading the horse up the street that led out toward the mine, she lashed him into a gallop.  She arrived at the scene of the accident just before the first men rescued reappeared.  She learned of Keith’s effort to save them.  She would have gone into the mine herself had she not been restrained.  Just then the men came out.

The shouts and cries of joy that greeted so unexpected a deliverance drowned everything else for a few moments; but as man after man was met and received half dazed into the arms of his family and friends, the name of Keith began to be heard on all sides.  One voice, however, was more imperative than the others; one figure pressed to the front—­that of the gayly dressed woman who had just been comforting and encouraging the weeping women about the mine entrance.