and sand, and the shaft was closed again.

For days there was no news; then the first fruitless descent;
then men went down and brought up heavy shapes rolled in canvas
and bore them to the women; and "each morning the Red Cross
president, lifting the curtain of the car where he slept, would
see at first light the still rows of those muffled figures
waiting in the hopeless daybreak." Not yet had the body of the
young superintendent been found; yet one might not hope because
of that. But when one afternoon the head-lines of the papers
blazed with a huge "Rescued," she could not read it, and she knew
that she had hoped.

It was true. Eighteen men had been brought up alive, and Johnny
McLean was one. Johnny McLean carried out senseless, with an
arm broken, with a gash in his forehead done by a falling beam
as he crawled to hail the rescuers--but Johnny McLean alive.
He was very ill, yet the girl had not a minute's doubt that
he would get well.

And while he lay unconscious, the papers of the country rang
with the story of what he had done, and his father sitting
by his bed read it, through unashamed tears, but Johnny took
no interest. Breathing satisfied him pretty well for a while.
There is no need to tell over what the papers told--how he had
taken the leadership of the demoralized band; how when he found
them cut off from the escape which he had planned he had set
them to work building a barrier across a passage where the air
was fresher; how behind this barrier they had lived for six days,
by the faith and courage of Johnny McLean. How he had kept them