cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, and estate. These twin
toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng forcing his way to the place
where they had worked. With him was one other miner of great courage
and knowledge, who had gone with other rescue parties in other
catastrophes.

It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small
explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the rescuer
of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and imprisoned near a
spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed.

Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine,
Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian
Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth,
stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans
that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had
not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking miner,
called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in command. His
look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on whom you could
rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable expression. Behind him
were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their faces showing nothing of
that pity in their hearts which drove them to risk all to save the
lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity and humanity? Was there
also something of that perdurable cohesion of class against class; the
powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, the shoulder-to-shoulder
combination of war; the tribal fanaticism which makes brave men out of
unpromising material? Maybe something of this element entered into the
heroism which had been displayed; but whatever the impulse or the
motive, the act and the end were the same--men's lives were in peril,
and they were risking their own to rescue them.

When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself to
the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing Brengyn
approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart miner a
leader of men.

"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose
white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with courage.
There was something akin in the expression of her face and that of
other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood apart, some
with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst with regnant
resolution. All had that horrible qui