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The Courage of the Commonplace by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
page 21 of 38 (55%)
you know." The girl stared.

"Died? Is Johnny McLean dead?"

She did fall down, or cry out, but then Brant knew. Swiftly he
came up and put his big, brotherly arm around her.

"Wait, my dear," he said. "There's a ray of hope. Not really
hope, you know--it was certain death he went to--but yet they
haven't found--they don't know, absolutely, that he's dead."

Five minutes later the girl was locked in her room with the paper.
His name was in large letters in the head-lines. She read the
account over many times, with painstaking effort to understand
that this meant Johnny McLean. That he was down there now, while
she breathed pure air. Many times she read it, dazed. Suddenly
she flashed to the window and threw it open and beat on the stone
sill and dragged her hands across it. Then in a turn she felt
this to be worse than useless and dropped on her knees and found
out what prayer is. She read the paper again, then, and faced
things.

It was the oft-repeated, incredible story of men so accustomed to
danger that they throw away their lives in sheer carelessness.
A fire down in the third level, five hundred feet underground;
delay in putting it out; shifting of responsibility of one to
another, mistakes and stupidity; then the sudden discovering
that they were all but cut off; the panic and the crowding for
the shaft, and scenes of terror and selfishness and heroism
down in the darkness and smothering smoke.
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