“Right, lads,” he said with a stern joy in his voice.  “But there’s only one of you can go, and I’ll pick him.  Here, Jim,” he added to a small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height—­“here, Jim Gawley, you’re comin’ wi’ me, an’ that’s all o’ you as can come.  No, no,” he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent.  “Jim’s got no missis, nor mother, and he’s tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, and he’s all right, too, in tight corners.”  Now he turned to Stafford and Tynemouth and the others.  “You’ll come wi’ me,” he said to Stafford—­” if you want.  It’s a bad look-out, but we’ll have a try.  You’ll do what I say?” he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set.

“You know the place,” Stafford answered.  “I’ll do what you say.”

“My word goes?”

“Right.  Your word goes.  Let’s get on.”

Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth laid a hand on her arm.

“He’ll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done,” she whispered.

Stafford did not turn round.  He said something in an undertone to Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit’s mouth.

Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth.  “What do you think the chances are?” he asked in a low tone.

“Go to—­bed!” was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind.  Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to Brengyn’s call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white feather.  In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of class his own class had suffered.

“Or go and talk to the women,” he added to Fellowes.  “Make ’em comfortable.  You’ve got a gift that way.”

Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit and watched the preparations for the descent.

Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so bright and serene.  It was as though Peace had made its habitation on the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though wintertime was near.  Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley.  All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life—­that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented toilers.  As Al’mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men’s hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return.