alive, sometimes they are dead, sometimes they are
dying. I shall go mad, I shall go mad!"

With this he went raging about, giving the wildest orders, with the looks
and tones of a madman. In a minute he had a cage ready for Walter, and
twenty fresh-lit lamps, and down went Walter with more men and pickaxes.
As soon as he got out of the cage he cried, wildly, "Stop that, men, and
do as I do."

He took a sweep with his pick, and delivered a horizontal blow at the
clay on that side of the shaft Bartley had told him to attack. His
pickaxe stuck in it, and he extricated it with difficulty.

"Nay, master," cried a miner who had fallen in love with him, "drive thy
pick at t' coal."

Walter then observed that above the clay there was a narrow seam of coal;
he heaved his pick again, but instead of striking it half downward, as he
ought to have done, he delivered a tremendous horizontal blow that made
the coal ring like a church bell, and jarred his own stout arms so
terribly that the pick fell out of his numbed hand.

Then the man who had advised him saw that he was disabled for a time, and
stepped into his place.

But in that short interval an incident occurred so strange and thrilling
that the stout miners uttered treble cries, like women, and then one
mighty "Hah!" burst like a diapason from their manly bosoms.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BURIED ALIVE.--THE THREE DEADLY PERILS.

Seven miners were buried under the ruins of the shaft; but although
masses of coal and clay fell into the hall from the side nearest to
the explosions, and blocked up some of the passages, nobody was
crushed to death there; only the smoke was so stifling that it seemed
impossible to live.

That smoke was lighter than the air; its thick pall lifted by degrees and
revealed three figures.

Grace Hope, by happy instinct, had sunk upon the ground to breathe in
that stifling smoke. Hope, who had collared Ben Burnley, had sunk to the
ground with him, but still clutched the assassin. These were the three
left alive in the hall, and this was their first struggle for life.

As soon as it was possible to speak Hope took up his lamp, which had
fallen, and holding it up high, he cried, "Grace, my child, where are
you?" She came to him directly; he took her in his arms and thanked God
for this great preservation.

Then he gave Burnley a kick, and ordered him to the right hand of the
hall. "You'll keep to that side," he said, "and think of what you hav