But the preacher needed no urging.  Falling on his knees, he prayed as possibly he had never prayed before.  In a few moments Keith began to come to.  But Bluffy was still unconscious, and a half-hour later the Doctor pronounced him past hope.

* * * * *

It was some time before Keith was able to rise from his bed, and during this period a number of events had taken place affecting him, and, more or less, affecting New Leeds.  Among these was the sale of Mr. Plume’s paper to a new rival which had recently been started in the place, and the departure of Mr. Plume (to give his own account of the matter) “to take a responsible position upon a great metropolitan journal.”  He was not a man, he said, “to waste his divine talents in the attempt to carry on his shoulders the blasted fortunes of a ‘bursted boom,’ when the world was pining for the benefit of his ripe experience.”  Another account of the same matter was that rumor had begun to connect Mr. Plume’s name with the destruction of the Wickersham mine and the consequent disaster in the Rawson mine.  His paper, with brazen effrontery, had declared that the accident in the latter was due to the negligence of the management.  This was too much for the people of New Leeds in their excited condition.  Bluffy was dead; but Hennson, the man whom Keith had rescued, had stated that they had cut through into a shaft when the water broke in on them, and an investigation having been begun, not only of this matter, but of the previous explosion in the Wickersham mine, Mr. Plume had sold out his paper hastily and shaken the dust of New Leeds from his feet.

Keith knew nothing of this until it was all over.  He was very ill for a time, and but for the ministrations of Dr. Balsam, who came up from Ridgely to look after him, and the care of a devoted nurse in the person of Terpsichore, this history might have ended then.  Terpsichore had, immediately after Keith’s accident, closed her establishment and devoted herself to his care.  There were many other offers of similar service, for New Leeds was now a considerable town, and Keith might have had a fair proportion of the gentler sex to minister to him; but Dr. Balsam, to whom Terpsichore had telegraphed immediately after Keith’s rescue, had, after his first interview with her in the sick-room, decided in favor of the young woman.

“She has the true instinct,” said the Doctor to himself.  “She knows when to let well enough alone, and holds her tongue.”

Thus, when Keith was able to take notice again, he found himself in good hands.

A few days after he was able to get up, Keith received a telegram summoning him to New York to meet the officers of the company.  As weak as he was, he determined to go, and, against the protestations of doctor and nurse, he began to make his preparations.

Just before Keith left, a visitor was announced, or rather announced himself; for Squire Rawson followed hard upon his knock at the door.  His heavy boots, he declared, “were enough to let anybody know he was around, and give ’em time to stop anything they was ashamed o’ doin’.”