ft, the
geophone expert reported voices.

The message was sped aloft:

"The men are still alive! We have heard them talking!"

The news seemed too good to be credited. Seven days the three men had
been entombed, seven days without food, water or light, seven days in
foul air, probably impregnated with noxious vapors.[1]

[Footnote 1: A very similar accident, wherein a landslide accompanied
the fall of the coal bank, occurred at Blue Rock, Ohio, in 1856.
There, also, four entombed men were rescued after an imprisonment of
eight days. (F. R-W)]

Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the signal came from below to
the pit-head to cease hauling.

What had happened?

There could be but one explanation. The cars must have stopped.

There had been another fall in the mine, blocking off the gallery.

The rescuers were caught!

Like wild-fire the news spread through the mining village.

Great and excited as had been the crowd before, it was ten times more
excited now. Women, whose husbands were in the rescue gang, shook
their fists at Owens, clamoring that he had sent fifty men to death in
order to save three. The animosity spread to the miners who had lacked
the nerve to volunteer, and all sorts of wild rumors passed among the
crowd.

There might have been serious trouble, but the gates of the high
fences around the pit-head enclosure had been closed, and the mine
guards, armed with rifles, patrolled the place. Ever since the days of
the "Molly Maguires,"--and many much more recent bloody outbreaks
among coal miners--colliery owners have maintained armed guards.

Happily there was no actual trouble, though the crowd was getting
ugly, for, a little more than two hours later, there came the cheering
news that a supporting gang of rescue workers had driven a new gallery
through one of the pillars of coal, and that union with the old line
was effected.

Again a faint rumble!

Hopes dropped once more, but, after a brief inspection, the mining
engineer reported that the fall had taken place in another part of the
mine and that there was no immediate danger.

At 8 o'clock that evening, voices could be faintly heard. An hour
later, using a megaphone, the rescuers made the survivors hear that
help was near them.

"How many of you are there?"

Thinly, so thinly that the voice could scarcely be heard, came back
the answer:

"Three."

"All alive and well?"

"We are all alive. Jim Getwood and Anton Rover are