in to the air-way. Moving back a little
to search for foot-prints, he came to an old door-way and sat clown by
it to rest--yes, and to weep. He could no longer think of the torture
the child must have endured in his wanderings through the old mine and
keep the tears from his eyes. He almost hoped that death had long ago
come to the boy's relief.

"Oh, puir lad!" he sobbed, "puir, puir lad!"

Below him, in the darkness, he heard the drip of water from the roof.
Aside from that, the place was very, very still.

Then, for a moment, his heart stopped beating and he could not move.

He had heard a voice somewhere near him saying:--

"Good-night, Uncle Billy! If I wake first in the mornin', I'll call
you--good-night!"

It was what Ralph was used to saying when he went to bed at home. But
it was not Ralph's voice sounding through the darkness; it was only
the ghost of Ralph's voice.

In the next moment the man's strength returned to him; he seized his
lamp and leaped through the old door-way, and there at his feet lay
Ralph. The boy was living, breathing, talking.

Billy fell on his knees beside him and began to push the hair back
from his damp forehead, kissing it tenderly as he did so.

"Ralph," he said, "Ralph, lad, dinna ye see me? It's your Uncle Billy,
Ralph, your Uncle Billy."

The boy did not open his eyes, but his lips moved.

"Did you call me, Uncle Billy?" he asked. "Is it mornin'? Is it
daylight?"

"It'll soon be daylight, lad, verra soon noo, verra soon."

He had fastened his lamp in his cap, placed his arms gently under the
child's body, and lifted him to his breast. He stood for a moment
then, questioning with himself. But the slope was the nearest and the
way to it was the safest, and there was no time to wait. He started
down the air-way on his journey to the outer world, bearing his burden
as tenderly as a mother would have borne her babe, looking down at
times into the still face, letting the tears drop now and then on the
paper pinned to the boy's breast.

He stopped to rest after a little, holding the child on his knees as
he sat, and looking curiously at the letter, on which his tears had
fallen. He read it slowly by the light of his lamp, bending back the
fold to do so. He did not wonder at it. He knew what it meant and why
the boy had fastened it there.

"Ye s'all gae to her, lad," he said, "ye s'all gae to the mither. I'm
thankfu', verra thankfu', that the father kenned the truth afo