upon the ground below the boy and his mother. "The fire is in the old
McCrary cut," she said, her voice quivering, a dumb hopeless look in
her eyes. "They can't get through to close the doors. My man Ike is in
there." She put down her head and sat weeping. The boy knew the woman.
She was a neighbour who lived in an unpainted house on the hillside.
In the yard in front of her house a swarm of children played among the
stones. Her husband, a great hulking fellow, got drunk and when he
came home kicked his wife. The boy had heard her screaming at night.

Suddenly in the growing crowd of miners below the embankment Beaut
McGregor saw his father moving restlessly about. On his head he had
his cap with the miner's lamp lighted. He went from group to group
among the people, his head hanging to one side. The boy looked at him
intently. He was reminded of the October day on the eminence
overlooking the fruitful valley and again he thought of his father as
a man inspired, going through a kind of ceremony. The tall miner
rubbed his hands up and down his legs, he peered into the faces of the
silent men standing about, his lips moved and his red beard danced up
and down.

As the boy looked a change came over the face of Cracked McGregor. He
ran to the foot of the embankment and looked up. In his eyes was the
look of a perplexed animal. The wife bent down and began to talk to
the weeping woman on the ground, trying to comfort her. She did not
see her husband and the boy and man stood in silence looking into each
other's eyes.

Then the puzzled look went out of the father's face. He turned and
running along with his head rolling about reached the closed door of
the mine. A man, who wore a white collar and had a cigar stuck in the