The newspaper story told how McLean, the young superintendent,
had come running down the street, bare-headed, with his light,
great pace of an athlete. How, just as he got there, the cage
of six men, which had gone to the third level, had been drawn
up after vague, wild signalling, filled with six corpses.
How, when the crowd had seen that he meant to go down, a storm
of appeal had broken that he should not throw his life away;
how the very women whose husbands and sons were below had clung
to him. Then the paper told of how he had turned at the mouth
of the shaft--the girl could see him standing there tall and broad,
with the light on his boyish blond head. He had snatched a
paper from his pocket and waved it at arm's-length so that everyone
could see. The map of the mine. Gallery 57, on the second level,
where the men now below had been working, was close to gallery 9,
entered from the other shaft a quarter of a mile away. The two
galleries did not communicate, but only six feet of earth divided
them. The men might chop through to 9 and reach the other shaft
and be saved. But the men did not know it. He explained shortly
that he must get to them and tell them. He would go to the second
level and with an oxygen helmet would reach possible air before
he was caught. Quickly, with an unhesitating decision, he talked,
and his buoyancy put courage in to the stricken crowd. With that
a woman's voice lifted.

"Don't go--don't ye go, darlin'," it screamed. "'Tis no frinds
down there. 'Tis Terence O'Hara and his gang--'tis the
strike-makers. Don't be throwin' away your sweet young life
for thim."