in the darkness, and never learning its
lessons. Saviors in all ages had lifted the darkness a bit, and given
knowledge, and sometimes it had profited for a while till false prophets
arose to mislead.

It was a seething feverish mass, stamping and surging towards every
blatant voice which cried the false message to it, rousing it to anger,
and again misleading, until it often rose to rend its saviors instead of
those who had duped it so shamelessly.

All the tragic procession filed past, and he gave them peace and
knowledge. By and by they grew to a long thin stream, feverish and
agitated, seemingly all converging towards a point--pain and anxiety in
every quick movement, and suffering in every gesture. He looked with
still more and more compassion upon them, with a greater love in his
breast, but it did not calm them as before, and at last in desperation
he stretched out his hands in appealing pity for them, his whole being
aglow with the desire to help and pity and love, and he found that the
scene changed. He was on the moor, and there was the discomfort of cold
in his limbs; but--yes, he was looking at the pit, and there was a long
stream of men, women and children, principally women and children,
running frantically across the moor towards the pit, and he could hear
the faint sound of their voices, which clearly betokened suffering,
anxiety and alarm. Something had happened. He must have been looking at
that procession for a long time, he realized, and pulling himself
together, he bounded to his feet and was off in a long striding race
through the moor towards the pit, his heart telling him that something
had happened which was out of the ordinary kind of accident that
regularly happened at a coal mine. He bounded along, knowing as he went
that there was something more of sorrow for his mother in this, whatever
it was. He felt so, but could not account for the feeling, and as this
thought grew in intensity in his mind, he changed his course a bit, and
made for home, to ascertain what had really happened. It was something
big, he felt, but whatever it was, his mother must again be called upon
to suffer, and his alarm grew with his pace, until he arrived breathless
at the house. One look at her face, and he knew his instincts had told
him the truth.

She was white and strained, though tearless, but her eyes were full of
an awful suffering.

"What has happened, mother?" he demanded, as if he could hardly wait for