hich for the moment the flood ran
to meet the rising moss creeping up relentlessly from below.

Choking and only half conscious he staggered on with all sense of
disaster gone from his mind, with no thought of his comrades on the
other side waiting so impatiently to be released, and singing their
frothy songs in the hope that all was well, his legs doubling below him,
and his lungs heaving to expel the poison which the thick air contained.
Down at last he fell, his head striking against the side of the roadway,
and he lay still.

The moss might rise hungrily over him now, the rotten roof might fall
upon him, all the dangers of the mine might conspire together against
him; but nothing they might do could ever again strike terror into the
young heart that lay there, feebly throbbing its last as it was being
overcome with the deadly poison of the black damp.

He was proof against all their terrors now, the spirit could evade them
yet; for though the old shaft might collapse and imprison his body and
claim it as a sacrifice to the King Terror of the Underworld, no prison
was ever created that could contain the indomitable spirit of man as
God. He was free--free, and was happy and could cry defiance to the
dangers of the mine, to the terrors of time itself. He could clutch the
corners of the earth, and play with it as a toy of time, among the Gods
of Eternity.

"Choose, choose wha' you'll tak'," throbbed the young heart and a smile
of triumph played upon the lips as the pictures of bygone times flitted
across his dying brain. He was again the happy infant, hungry it may be,
and ill-clad, but Heaven contained no happier soul. The little stomach
might not be filled with sufficient food; but the spirit of him as it
was in younger years knew no material limits to its laughter in the
childish ring games of youth. Again he was waiting in the dark wintry
mornings on Mysie, so that she would not be afraid to go to work on the
pit-head; ay, and he was happy to take the windward side of her in the
storm, and shield her from the winter's blast, tying her little shawl
about her ears and making her believe he did not feel the cold at all.

He was back again at his mother's knee, listening to her glorious voice
singing some pitiful old ballad, as she crooned him to sleep; or lying
trying to forget the hunger he felt as the glorious old tune seemed to
drown his senses while he waited to say his prayer at night.

"Jesus, tender shep