the Tray-Spot, and the pain throbs and the pumping apparatus at the mine seemed to have some curious relationship.
“Sell! Never!” the fresh young voice flung back instantly, and the timbre of it was a battle-cry. “We’ll fight, dad – for our rights first, and then – then we’ll buy!”
He stood erect, every curve of fine youthfulness buoyant with victories to come, his head flung a trifle back and his mouth resolute.
Fatherly pride, exultation, triumph, swung John Carrington up on his elbow from his pillows in a certain fierce joy, and something glistened on his cheek – something that pain and fatigue and loneliness had never crystaled there.
“I have a son to stand by me,” he said, and it was the dignity of a king to the crown prince.
The leonine old head was lifted proudly, and the hand that he stretched out might have held a scepter.
Then reaction of the strain came swiftly, and the lad leaped to him, as he dropped back limp and white against the pillows, with a sudden film drawn over the eyes so lately keen of sight, and the rushing of many waters in the ears that had heard so happily.
CHAPTER III
Yellow Dog was having the time of its life.
It was, to use a local idiom, passing out a new line of talk every day.
What this sudden access of interest meant to an isolated small town which existed solely on account of its two mines one would have to live in Yellow Dog to understand.
The Tray-Spot and the Star were at opposite ends of the town’s main street, each a local fetish in its way to the miners.
Underfoot everywhere the soft red hematite ore stained everything that it touched.
Beyond, hills after hills covered with scraggy pine. Half a mile to the south was the railway station, and a spur ran to both mines.
Since the loungers around that station had witnessed the home-coming of young Carrington, conversation had flourished in dialects Cornish and Irish and Swedish and “Dago,” as well as that tongue to which its users alluded proudly as “United States.”
The first comment of all this polyglot assemblage had inclined toward the critical, with emphasis which ran the gamut from the humorous to the snarl, laid on what Mr. Kipley had characterized as “those dum clothes.”
Trevanion, shift boss, coming to the surface that first night, to learn of the child’s peril, heard it in silence and with smoldering eyes; heard it sullenly as he held the child in his arms, and with a surly nod went back to his cottage.
And the long-legged girl who told him resented his silence as a lack of interest not only in the event, but in her narrative.
It was not often that anything so exciting happened. Events were usually underground casualties in Yellow Dog. “’E could ’a’ said ’e was glad the child wasna killed,” she complained to her father.
“’E’d na say what you maun know, onyway,” she got for comfort; for the men admired Trevanion, and trusted him blindly.
They comprehended, too, the way he had taken his trouble, and they left him to himself, since he wished it. It was his way; just as it was his way to read, to study, to get some beginnings of the patiently dug-out education of a dully persistent man.
If he had lost his Cornish accent, save in excitement or in his orders to them, he had not lost his Cornish patience, nor that curious Cornish affinity between man and mine.
What they did not understand was the measure of his fierce love for his child; the child that was to have a chance. This was the mainspring of his life.
Trevanion was seated on his doorstep, with the child on his knee, when young Carrington rode down the street once more, leisurely this time; looking at everything with interested eyes that recognized the old and familiar, and saw the new and changed, with a buoyant alertness which seemed to match the careless grace of the way he sat his horse.
The boy Trevanion had used to see at play had grown up to this lordliness, had he? To ride recklessly, careless of whom he ran down, trusting to luck to snatch children from under his horse’s feet. Trevanion hated him.
He saw him rein in the Colonel to ask some question of a woman who was leaning her elbows interestedly on her gatepost. Then young Carrington came on to stop opposite him.
“You’re just the man I’m looking for, Trevanion,” he said, and his tone was clear and crisp.
Trevanion got on his feet and looked at him loweringly. The child smiled at him.
“One of these days, Trevanion, I’m going to let you give me a few lessons in practical mining,” he said, pleasantly. “I may decide to become a mining man, after all. But that will have to go for the present, and you may be thankful for it. I’m inclined to think you’d find it harder work than being shift boss.”
Trevanion looked at him unsmilingly.
“However,” young Carrington went on, “they tell me you’ve never failed in anything you’ve tried yet, and I’m sure you wouldn’t begin with me. I’m no record-breaker,” he laughed, and there was something so pleasant in its sound that Trevanion was furious to find that he liked it.
“No, soberly, Trevanion,” he said, and his voice dropped to a seriousness that was sweeter toned than even his laughter, “father isn’t quite so well to-day. We’ve got to keep him pretty quiet for a few days, free from worry as much as possible; but we don’t want the men to know that. When he is up again we’ll get after those Tray-Spot people and put a stop to those free baths they’ve been good enough to give us. But we’ve got to pull him up carefully for a while. It’ll mean extra work and responsibility for you.”
Then a new note came in the musical voice.
“It means everything to the mine just now, Trevanion, that you are just where you are, a man to be trusted.”
The words were spoken with a grace which made them seem like a decoration conferred. The eyes that Trevanion raised met deep blue eyes with a mysterious something in them that conquered him. Fealty was suddenly strong in him, loyalty to the lad through thick and thin. Every fiber of his big burliness thrilled with a proud protectiveness. The child on his arm was holding out his arms to young Carrington. Three minutes before, his father would have resented it. Now he saw the firm, sure, tender grasp with which Carrington took him up before him on the saddle; he exulted in the child’s laugh as the Colonel walked off daintily, then took a bit of a canter down the street, and finally young Carrington brought a reluctant two-year-old back to the fatherly arms.
It was then that he said what he had had in his mind since morning – said it with a tenderness that rang perfectly true:
“All I was thinking of this morning, Trevanion, was to get to my father as soon as possible. But if my impatience had resulted in accident I should never have gotten over it.”
And Dick Trevanion, holding the little, warm, happy figure close in his great arms, said what half an hour ago he had never thought to say:
“I believe you, Mr. Ned.”
“Quiet!” said Mr. Kipley, to young Carrington’s comment, as he sat on the veranda steps that evening after dinner, looking with growing approval at that young gentleman as he lounged in a big wicker chair. “Well, of course, it tain’t the Boo-lee-vards” – for Mr. Kipley had consulted the encyclopedia painstakingly in order to converse comfortably with the returning traveler. “It tain’t the Boo-lee-vards,” he repeated, with an air of erudition, “but there are times when Yellow Dog can have as big a pack of firecrackers tied to its tail as you’d see anywhere.”
“Yes?” said the boy, and it was a yes that coaxed. He was enjoying Mr. Kipley hugely.
“Yes,” said Kipley, placidly. “Day after pay-day occasionally, or when the lumber-jacks come down from Raegan camp at Christmas time to get their money and blow it in before New Year’s.” Then he chuckled reminiscently.
“They’re