--on the
thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken.

"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian
Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame.

Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who
sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty
shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he
asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?"

Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's
back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which
filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men.

"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
an