ng with his hands at
the dirt around Grant's legs. Then Casper Herdicker and Chopini came to
help. As they stood at Grant's head, quick as a flash, the rock fell and
the two men standing at Grant's head were crushed like worms. The roof
of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the
lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out.
He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis
and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over
Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above
and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as it fell.

"Mugs, come here," called Dick Bowman. "Take that shovel," commanded the
father, "and hold it over Grant's face to keep the dirt from smothering
him." The boy looked in terror at the roof dropping dirt and ready to
fall, but the father glared at the son and he obeyed. No one spoke, but
four men worked--all that could stand about him. They dug out his body;
they released his legs, they freed his feet, and when he was free they
helped him up and hurried him down the passage which he had traversed
four days ago. Before they turned into the main bottom room, he was sick
with the stench. And as he turned into that room, where the cage landed,
he saw by the lantern lights and by the flaring torches held by a dozen
men, a great congregation of the dead--some piled upon others, some in
attitudes of prayer, some shielding their comrades in death, some
fleeing and stricken prone upon the floor, some sitting, looking the foe
in the face. Men were working with the bodies--trying to sort them into
a kind of order; but the work had just begun.

The weakened men, led by their rescuers, picked their way through the
corpses and went to the top in a cage. Far down in the shaft, the
daylight cut them like a knife. And as they mounted higher and higher,
they could hear the murmur of voices above them, and Grant could hear
the sobs of women and children long before he reached the top. The word
that men had been rescued passed out of the shaft house before they
could get out of the cage, and a great shout went up.

The men walked out of the shaft house and saw all about them, upon flat
cars, upon the dump near the shaft, upon buildings around the shaft
house, a great crowd of cheering men and women, pale, drawn, dreadful
faces, illumined by eager eyes. Grant lifted his eyes to the crowd.
There in a car