' I
ain't. I'll go where they don't dare. Please let me help!"

The men who were clustered on the carriage looked down on the boy in
mute astonishment. His slight figure was drawn up to its full height;
his little hands were tightly clenched; out from his brown eyes
shone the fire of resolution. Some latent spirit of true knighthood
had risen in his breast, had quenched all the coward in his nature,
and impelled him, in that one moment that called for sacrifice and
courage, to a deed as daring and heroic as any that the knights of old
were ever prompted to perform. To those who looked upon him thus, the
dust and rags that covered him were blotted out, the marks of pain and
poverty and all his childish weaknesses had disappeared, and it seemed
to them almost as though a messenger from God were standing in their
midst.

But Robert Burnham saw something besides this in the child's face; he
saw a likeness to himself that startled him. Men see things in moments
of sublimity to which at all other times their eyes are blinded. He
thought of Craft's story; he thought of the boy's story; he compared
them; a sudden hope seized him, a conviction broke upon his mind like
a flash of light.

This boy was his son. For the moment, all other thoughts, motives,
desires were blotted from his mind. His desperate errand was lost to
sight. The imperilled miners were forgotten.

"Ralph!" he cried, seizing the boy's hand in both of his; "Ralph, I
have found you!"

But the child looked up in wonder, and the men who stood by did not
know what it meant.

The carriage struck the floor of the mine and they all stepped off.
The shock at stopping brought Burnham to himself. This was no time,
no place to recognize the lad and take him to his heart. He would do
that--afterward. Duty, with a stern voice, was calling to him now.

"Men," he said, "are you ready? Here, soak the aprons; Ralph, take
this; now then, come on!"

Up the heading, in single file, they walked swiftly, swinging their
safety-lamps in their hands, or holding them against their breasts.
They knew that up in the chambers their comrades were lying prostrate
and in pain. They knew that the spaces through which they must pass to
reach them were filled with poisonous gases, and that in those regions
death lurked in every "entrance" and behind every "pillar." But they
hurried on, saying little, fearing little, hoping much, as they
plunged ahead into the blackness, on their humane