It was a seething feverish mass, stamping and surging towards every blatant voice which cried the false message to it, rousing it to anger, and again misleading, until it often rose to rend its saviors instead of those who had duped it so shamelessly.

All the tragic procession filed past, and he gave them peace and knowledge.  By and by they grew to a long thin stream, feverish and agitated, seemingly all converging towards a point—­pain and anxiety in every quick movement, and suffering in every gesture.  He looked with still more and more compassion upon them, with a greater love in his breast, but it did not calm them as before, and at last in desperation he stretched out his hands in appealing pity for them, his whole being aglow with the desire to help and pity and love, and he found that the scene changed.  He was on the moor, and there was the discomfort of cold in his limbs; but—­yes, he was looking at the pit, and there was a long stream of men, women and children, principally women and children, running frantically across the moor towards the pit, and he could hear the faint sound of their voices, which clearly betokened suffering, anxiety and alarm.  Something had happened.  He must have been looking at that procession for a long time, he realized, and pulling himself together, he bounded to his feet and was off in a long striding race through the moor towards the pit, his heart telling him that something had happened which was out of the ordinary kind of accident that regularly happened at a coal mine.  He bounded along, knowing as he went that there was something more of sorrow for his mother in this, whatever it was.  He felt so, but could not account for the feeling, and as this thought grew in intensity in his mind, he changed his course a bit, and made for home, to ascertain what had really happened.  It was something big, he felt, but whatever it was, his mother must again be called upon to suffer, and his alarm grew with his pace, until he arrived breathless at the house.  One look at her face, and he knew his instincts had told him the truth.

She was white and strained, though tearless, but her eyes were full of an awful suffering.

“What has happened, mother?” he demanded, as if he could hardly wait for her to answer.

“The moss has broken in, an’ twenty-three men are lost.  Jamie an’ Andra are among them.  They gaed oot themselves this morning, telling me they could work fine, even though you werena there.  Oh, Rob!  What will I do!  Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!  My bonnie laddies!” and with a sob in her voice she turned away, and Robert was again out of the house, and running through the moor to the pit, as hard as desperation could drive him.  His two brothers were down there, and they must be got out.  Even as he ran he wondered what strange freak of fate it was, that had kept him out there on the moor all night and so saved him from this terrible fate.