it," said Anice. "Some day, surely."

Anice thought of all this again when she glanced at Derrick. Derrick was
more than usually disturbed to-day. He had for some time been working
his way to an important decision, fraught with some annoyance and
anxiety to himself. There was to be a meeting of the owners in a few
weeks, and at this meeting he had determined to take a firm stand.

"The longer I remain in my present position, the more fully I am
convinced of the danger constantly threatening us," he said to Anice.
"I am convinced that the present system of furnaces is the cause of more
explosions than are generally attributed to it. The mine here is a
'fiery' one, as they call it, and yet day after day goes by and no
precautions are taken. There are poor fellows working under me whose
existence means bread to helpless women and children. I hold their lives
in trust, and if I am not allowed to place one frail barrier between
them and sudden death, I will lead them into peril no longer,--I will
resign my position. At least I can do that."

The men under him worked with a dull, heavy daring, born of long use and
a knowledge of their own helplessness against their fate. There was
not one among them who did not know that in going down the shaft to
his labor, he might be leaving the light of day behind him forever. But
seeing the blue sky vanish from sight thus during six days of fifty-two
weeks in the year, engendered a kind of hard indifference. Explosions
had occurred, and might occur again; dead men had been carried up to
be stretched on the green earth,--men crushed out of all semblance to
humanity; some of themselves bore the marks of terrible maiming; but
it was an old story, and they had learned to face the same hazard
recklessly.

With Fergus Derrick, however, it was a different matter. It was he who
must lead these men into new fields of danger.

CHAPTER XXXIII - Fate

The time came, before many days, when the last tie that bound Joan to
her present life was broken. The little one, who from the first had
clung to existence with a frail hold, at last loosened its weak grasp.
It had been ill for several days,--so ill that Joan had remained at
home to nurse it,--and one night, sitting with it upon her knee in her
accustomed place, she saw a change upon the small face.

It had been moaning continuously, and suddenly the plaintive sound
ceased. Joan bent over it. She had been holding the tiny hand as she
alw