busy playing games, telling stories; had taught them music and
put heart into them to sing glees, down in their tomb; how he had
stood guard over the pitiful supply of water which dripped from
the rock walls, and found ways of saving every drop and made
each man take his turn; how when Tom Steele went mad and tried
to break out of the barrier on the fifth day, it was McLean who
fought him and kept him from the act which would have let in the
black damp to kill all of them; how it was the fall in the
slippery darkness of that struggle which had broken his arm.
The eighteen told the story, but by bit, as the men grew strong
enough to talk, and the record rounded out, of life and reason
saved by a boy who had risen out of the gray of commonplace
into the red light of heroism. The men who came out of that
burial spoke afterward of McLean as of an inspired being.

At all events the strike question was settled in that week below,
and Johnny McLean held the ringleaders now in the hollow of his
hand. Terence O'Hara opened his eyes and delivered a dictum two
hours after he was carried home. "Tell thim byes," he growled
in weak jerks, "that if any wan of thim says shtrike till that
McLean child drops the hat, they'll fight--O'Hara."

Day after day, while the country was in an uproar of enthusiasm,
Johnny lay unconscious, breathing, and doing no more. And large
engineering affairs were allowed to go and rack and ruin while
Henry McLean watched his son.

On a hot morning such as comes in May, a veteran fly of the year
before buzzed about the dim window of the sick-room and banged
against the half-closed shutters. Half-conscious of the sound