He saw little Ben under a car throwing back the coal
falling from the faulty chute on to the ground.

Through the roar Grant heard a yell as from a man in terror. He looked
back of him and saw the Frisco car coming down the grade as if shot from
a monster catapult!

"The boy--the boy--!" he heard the man on the car shriek. He tried to
clamber over the coal to the edge of the car, but before he could reach
the side, the Frisco car had hit the loading car a terrific blow,
sending it a car length down the track.

One horrible scream was all they heard from little Ben. Grant was at his
side in a moment. There, stuck to the rail, were two little legs and an
arm. Grant stooped, picked up the little body, pulled it loose from the
tracks, and carried it, running, to the company hospital.

As Grant ran, tears fell in the little, coal-stained face, and made
white splotches on the child's cheeks.

CHAPTER XLV

IN WHICH LIDA BOWMAN CONSIDERS HER UNIVERSE AND TOM VAN DORN WINS
ANOTHER VICTORY

For a long and weary night and a day of balancing doubt, and another
dull night, little Ben Bowman lay limp and crumpled on his cot--a broken
lump of clay hardly more than animate. Lida Bowman, his mother, all that
time sat in the hall of the hospital outside the door of his room. The
stream of sorrow that winds through a hospital passed before her
unheeded. Her husband came, sat with her silently for a while, went, and
came again, many times. But she did not go. In the morning of the second
day as she stood peering through the door crack at the child she saw his
little body move in a deep sigh, and saw his black eyes open for a
second and close as he smiled. Dr. Nesbit, who stood beside her, grasped
her hand and led her away.

"I think the worst is over, Lida," he said, and held her hand as they
walked down the hall. He sat with her in the waiting room, into which
the earliest tide of visitors had not begun to flow, and promised her
that if the child continued to rally from the shock, she might stand by
his bed at noon. Then for the first time she wept. He stood by the
window looking out at the great pillars of smoke that were smudging the
dawn, at the smelter fumes that were staining the sky, at the hurrying
crowd of men and women and children going into the mines, the mills, the
shops, hurrying to work with the prod of fear ever in their backs--fear
of the disgrace of want, fear of the shame of beggary, fear to hear some
l