or?"

"To try to get that second gang back, anyway."

"But wasn't it an awful chance to take, to go back into that stuff?"

"Who bothers about chances?" exclaimed the other. "But I took the
canary!"

"Well?"

"I wasn't more than half-way to the gang when the bird began to quiver
and just as I reached them, it fell off the perch. I held out the cage.
That was all the proof I needed."

"'Guess the kid's right,' the foreman of the gang said. 'Go back, boys.'

"They raised a howl with him the same way that my own men did with me.
But he was an old-timer, and without wasting any words, he smashed the
foremost of the workers across the jaw. Under a torrent of abuse, the
men fell back. I was half-way to the entrance when everything turned
black before me. Next thing I knew, I was in the Mine Superintendent's
house with a trained nurse."

"White damp?" queried Eric.

"That's what the doctor said."

"What happened to the imprisoned bunch?"

"Old Man Barnett had just reached the entrance to the working with a
large rescue party all equipped with breathing apparatus, when I
collapsed. He got the trapped men out."

"I should think they'd have been poisoned for fair," said Eric.

"Not a bit of it," his friend replied. "The leak of white damp had all
come on the outside of the roof-fall, and there was hardly any of it on
the other side. Some of the men were pretty weak from lack of air and
that sort of thing, but not seriously hurt. It was the rescuers who
suffered."

"How was that, Ed?"

"Three of the five men who were in my gang died," said the other
mournfully.

"Great guns! Died?"

"Yes," the young miner said, "poor fellows, they went under. Another man
and I were the only ones who got over it."

"Died in saving others! That's sure tough!" There was a pause, and Eric
added, "What got you two clear?"

"The other chap had been lying full length on the ground, while
working, and as white damp rises, he had breathed less of the gas than
the others. I wasn't able to work, so I didn't have to breathe deep." He
looked down at his broken arm. "It's a queer thing," he said, "but it
was breaking my arm that saved my life."

CHAPTER IV

SNATCHED FROM A FROZEN DEATH

"Father! Father! What do you think?" cried Eric, bursting into the
sitting room at breakfast one morning, a couple of weeks after his
encounter with his young mining friend, "I'm going into the Life-Saving
work right away!"

"What's the e