sunlight, following
on the darkness of the shaft, and so dazed by the awful nature of the
calamity that had befallen us that at first I comprehended almost
nothing. The events of the day recorded themselves automatically upon
my mind, to be clearly recalled afterward. In a numb, dazed way I saw
a man in a light gray coat creep stiffly from the cage, last of all,
and, as he staggered away up the dump, I took a step toward him,
looked in his face, and recoiled with a wild, heart-broken cry.

The wearer of the coat was old Joe. Facing around, I looked on the
rescued men, my heart beginning to beat in slow, suffocating
throbs--my father was not among them.

For a moment I was quite beside myself. Like one gone suddenly mad, I
sprang at the negro, and, seizing his arm, shook it furiously, crying:

"Father, father--where is my father? What have you done with my
father?"

The old man began to whimper, "I ain' done nuffin'! I wish't I had! I
wish't hit was me dat done gone to respec' dat ole Watkin's Lateral,
den I'd 'a' been drownded, an' he wouldn't!"

"Watkin's Lateral?" echoed one of the men who had so narrowly
escaped. "Was Gordon in there? That's where the water burst through
first. I thought that some one might have gone in there to test the
walls, and they'd given way."

"You are probably right, Johnson. Not but what the walls would have
caved in, just the same, whether they were struck or not."

Little heed as I paid, at the moment, to what was going on or being
said, yet it all impressed itself upon my mind, to be recalled
afterward, and afterward I knew that this last observation of Mr.
Rutledge's was intended to exonerate father from any charge of
carelessness in going into that place at just that time. But every
employee of the Gray Eagle knew that Watkin's Lateral--a long,
diagonal passage, with which the main tunnel was connected by a number
of side extensions--was a treacherous place in which to work at all
times, and must, of necessity, have been trebly so this morning.
Loosing my frenzied hold of old Joe, I crouched to the ground, while
Joe sank down on the dump, covering his face with his gnarled old
hands. "He made me tuck an' put on his coat, he did, an' tole me fur
t' start fur home; I was dat racked wid de misery in my back!" he
moaned.

The men were again clustering about the shaft. I got up and went and
stood beside them. A hollow roar came up from the depths into which we
gazed. The black wa