became suddenly transfigured; and the silent crowd cheered
emotionally that little party of forlorn hope.

They entered the cage, and down they went. Still it was difficult for
me to think that we were fronting tragedy, for no danger showed. An
hour and more passed in nervous and dismal waiting. There was a signal.
Some men ran to the pit-head carrying hot bricks and blankets. The
doctors took off their coats, and arranged bottles and tinkling
apparatus on chairs stuck in the mud. The air smelt of iodoform. A
cloth was laid on the ground from the shaft to the engine-house, and
stretchers were placed handy. The women, some carrying infants, broke
rank. That quickly up-running rope was bringing the first news. The
rope stopped running and the cage appeared. Only the rescue party came
out, one carrying a moribund cat. They knew nothing; and the
white-faced women, with hardly repressed hysteria, took again their
places by the engine-house. So we passed that day, watching the place
from which came nothing but disappointment. Occasionally a child, too
young to know it was adding to its mother's grief, would wail
querulously. There came a time when I and all there knew that to go
down that shaft was to meet with death. The increasing exhaustion and
pouring sweat of the returning rescue parties showed that. Yet the
miners who were not selected to go down were angry; they violently
abused the favouritism of the officials who would not let all risk
their lives.

I have a new regard for my fellows since Great Barr. About you and me
there are men like that. There is nothing to distinguish them. They
show no signs of greatness. They have common talk. They have coarse
ways. They walk with an ugly lurch. Their eyes are not eager. They are
not polite. Their clothes are dirty. They live in cheap houses on cheap
food. They call you "sir." They are the great unwashed, the mutable
many, the common people. The common people! Greatness is as common as
that. There are not enough honours and decorations to go round. Talk of
the soldier! _Vale_ to Welsby of Normanton! He was a common miner. He
is dead. His fellows were in danger, their wives were white-faced and
their children were crying, and he buckled on his harness and went to
the assault with no more thought for self than great men have in a
great cause; and he is dead. I saw him go to his death. I wish I could
tell you of Welsby of Normanton.

I left that place where the star-shine wa