nd
Bluffy were both too far gone to know anything of it.

The crowd, which up to this time had been buzzing with the excitement of
the reaction following the first rescue, suddenly hushed down to an awed
silence as Keith and Bluffy were brought out and were laid limp and
unconscious on a blanket, which Terpsichore had snatched from a man in
the front of the others. Many women pressed forward to offer assistance,
but the girl waved them back.

"A doctor!" she cried, and reaching for a brandy-bottle, she pressed it
first to Keith's lips. Turning to Drummond, the preacher, who stood
gaunt and dripping above her, she cried fiercely: "Pray, man; if you
ever prayed, pray now. Pray, and if you save 'em, I'll leave town. I
swear before God I will. Tell Him so."

But the preacher needed no urging. Falling on his knees, he prayed as
possibly he had never prayed before. In a few moments Keith began to
come to. But Bluffy was still unconscious, and a half-hour later the
Doctor pronounced him past hope.

* * * * *

It was some time before Keith was able to rise from his bed, and during
this period a number of events had taken place affecting him, and, more
or less, affecting New Leeds. Among these was the sale of Mr. Plume's
paper to a new rival which had recently been started in the place, and
the departure of Mr. Plume (to give his own account of the matter) "to
take a responsible position upon a great metropolitan journal." He was
not a man, he said, "to waste his divine talents in the attempt to carry
on his shoulders the blasted fortunes of a 'bursted boom,' when the
world was pining for the benefit of his ripe experience." Another
account of the same matter was that rumor had begun to connect Mr.
Plume's name with the destruction of the Wickersham mine and the
consequent disaster in the Rawson mine. His paper, with brazen
effrontery, had declared that the accident in the latter was due to the
negligence of the management. This was too much for the people of New
Leeds in their excited condition. Bluffy was dead; but Hennson, the man
whom Keith had rescued, had stated that they had cut through into a
shaft when the water broke in on them, and an investigation having been
begun, not only of this matter, but of the previous explosion in the
Wickersham mine, Mr. Plume had sold out his paper hastily and shaken the
dust of New Leeds from his feet.

Keith knew nothing of this until it was all over