corner of his mouth, put out his hand.

"Stop! Wait!" he shouted. Pushing the man aside with his powerful arm
the runner pulled open the door of the mine and disappeared down the
runway.

A hubbub arose. The man in the white collar took the cigar from his
mouth and began to swear violently. The boy stood on the embankment
and saw his mother running toward the runway of the mine. A miner
gripped her by the arm and led her back up the face of the embankment.
In the crowd a woman's voice shouted, "It's Cracked McGregor gone to
close the door to the McCrary cut."

The man with the white collar glared about as he chewed the end of his
cigar. "He's gone crazy," he shouted, again closing the door to the
mine.

Cracked McGregor died in the mine, almost within reach of the door to
the old cut where the fire burned. With him died all but five of the
imprisoned miners. All day parties of men tried to get down into the
mine. Below in the hidden passages under their own homes the scurrying
miners died like rats in a burning barn while their wives, with shawls
over their heads, sat silently weeping on the railroad embankment. In
the evening the boy and his mother went up the hill alone. From the
houses scattered over the hill came the sound of women weeping.

* * * * *

For several years after the mine disaster the McGregors, mother and
son, lived in the house on the hillside. The woman went each morning