He ran back but could get no further than within a stoop length of the old shaft.  There were hundreds of tons of debris and all was finally lost.  For the first time terror seized him and he tore desperately at the bowlders of stone, cutting his fingers and lacerating his body all over with cuts and bruises.  He raved and swore and shouted in desperation, the sweat streaming from every pore, his eyes wild and glaring, but he was soon driven back by the moss which was oozing and percolating through the broken mass of bowlders and gradually it forced him back with a rush as it burst through with a sudden slushing sound as if suddenly relieved from a barrier which held it.  Back he rushed, his light again becoming extinguished, the flood pursuing him relentlessly, the air now so heavy that he could hardly breathe, but groping his way he reached the first end roadway down which for the moment the flood ran to meet the rising moss creeping up relentlessly from below.

Choking and only half conscious he staggered on with all sense of disaster gone from his mind, with no thought of his comrades on the other side waiting so impatiently to be released, and singing their frothy songs in the hope that all was well, his legs doubling below him, and his lungs heaving to expel the poison which the thick air contained.  Down at last he fell, his head striking against the side of the roadway, and he lay still.

The moss might rise hungrily over him now, the rotten roof might fall upon him, all the dangers of the mine might conspire together against him; but nothing they might do could ever again strike terror into the young heart that lay there, feebly throbbing its last as it was being overcome with the deadly poison of the black damp.

He was proof against all their terrors now, the spirit could evade them yet; for though the old shaft might collapse and imprison his body and claim it as a sacrifice to the King Terror of the Underworld, no prison was ever created that could contain the indomitable spirit of man as God.  He was free—­free, and was happy and could cry defiance to the dangers of the mine, to the terrors of time itself.  He could clutch the corners of the earth, and play with it as a toy of time, among the Gods of Eternity.

“Choose, choose wha’ you’ll tak’,” throbbed the young heart and a smile of triumph played upon the lips as the pictures of bygone times flitted across his dying brain.  He was again the happy infant, hungry it may be, and ill-clad, but Heaven contained no happier soul.  The little stomach might not be filled with sufficient food; but the spirit of him as it was in younger years knew no material limits to its laughter in the childish ring games of youth.  Again he was waiting in the dark wintry mornings on Mysie, so that she would not be afraid to go to work on the pit-head; ay, and he was happy to take the windward side of her in the storm, and shield her from the winter’s blast, tying her little shawl about her ears and making her believe he did not feel the cold at all.