his meal was half finished, there came bursting out of his
soul a flame of emotion, and he put down his food, turned half around
from the table, grasped the edges of the board with both hands and cried
as a fanatic who sees a vision:

"Oh, those men,--those men--those wonderful, beautiful souls of men I
saw!--those strong, fearless. Godlike men!--there in the mine, I mean.
Evan Davis, Dick Bowman, Pat McCann, Jamey McPherson, Casper Herdicker,
Chopini--all of them; yes, Dennis Hogan, drunk as he is sometimes, and
Ira Dooley, who's been in jail for hold-ups--I don't care which
one--those wonderful men, who risked their lives for others, and Casper
Herdicker and Chopini, who gave their lives there under the rock for me.
My God, my God!"

His voice thrilled with emotion, and his arms trembled as his hands
gripped the table. Those who heard him did not stop him, for they felt
that from some uncovered spring in his being a section of personality
was gushing forth that never had seen day. He turned quietly to the
wondering child, took him from his chair and hugged him closely to a
man's broad chest and stroked the boyish head as the man's blue eyes
filled with tears. Grant sat for a moment looking at the floor, then
roughed his red mane with his fingers and said slowly and more quietly,
but contentiously:

"I know what you don't know with all your religion, Mr. Dexter; I know
what the Holy Ghost is now. I have seen it. The Holy Ghost is that
divine spark in every human soul--however life has smudged it over by
circumstance--that rises and envelopes a human creature in a flame of
sacrificial love for his kind and makes him joy to die to save others.
That's the Holy Ghost--that's what is immortal."

He clenched his great hickory fist and hit the table and lifted his face
again, crying: "I saw Dennis Hogan walk up to Death smiling that Irish
smile. I saw him standing with a ton of loose dirt hanging over him
while he was digging me out! I saw Evan Davis--little, bow-legged Evan
Davis--go out into the smoke alone--alone, Mr. Dexter, and they say Evan
is a coward--he went out alone and brought back Casper Herdicker's limp
body hugged to his little Welsh breast like a gorilla's--and saved a
man. I saw Dick Bowman do more--when the dirt was dropping from the
slipping, working roof into my mouth and eyes, and might have come down
in a slide--I lay there and watched Dick working to save me and I heard
him order his son to hold a