. Not that
he was impervious to anxiety for the men below, not that he was unmoved
by all that it meant to those standing round; but after that first wild
throb of terror that had clutched at his heart when his mother had told
him the dread news and that his two brothers were imprisoned in the
mine, something seemed suddenly to snap within him, the load and the
intensity of the pain lifted, and from that moment he had been master of
the situation.

He glanced round him as he waited quietly in his swinging seat. He felt
as he looked, no sense of fear or impending doom. He knew that black
damp probably lay in dense quantities down in that yawning gulf below
him, he knew that the sides of the shaft were in a bad state of
disrepair, and that they might give way at any time as the swinging rope
must inevitably touch them, and bring the whole thing in upon him, with
hundreds of tons of debris and moss.

Yet it was not of these things he thought. Perhaps he did not think of
anything particularly, but a far-off lilt of a children's game which was
played at school, kept iterating and reiterating through his brain, and
everything seemed done to that tune.

"Don't take a laddie, oh,
Laddie oh, laddie oh,
Don't take a laddie oh,
Take a bonnie wee lassie."

It sang continually within him and men seemed to move to its regular
beat, as they hurried to get ready. He looked at the hills, and noted
how quiet everything seemed, their curving outlines gave such a sense of
eternal rest. There was a patch of lovely blue sky above him, he noticed
where the clouds opened up and a glint of golden glorious sunshine came
through; but it looked garish and it closed again and the white clouds
trailed away, their lower fringes clinging to the hill tops like veils
of gossamer woven by time to deck the bride of Spring. A lark rose at
the edge of the crowd of weeping women and children as if unmindful of
the tragedy over which it sang so rapturously, and he noted its
fluttering wings and swelling throat as it soared in circles of glad
song.

All these things and more he noted though it was but a momentary pause.

"Are you right?" came the question from the men at the windlass, far
away it seemed and unconnected with the scene.

"Right," he answered with a start, and looking round he seemed to become
aware of the white-faced, red-eyed women among whom his mother's face
seemed to stand out. She was not weeping, he noticed, but oh God! h