out, although we had no idea that the fall had been so extensive or the calamity so great. We did not doubt but that we should be able to make our way along the faces of the chambers, next to the solid coal, to an opening at the outcrop; so we relighted our lamps and started. We had gone but a little way before we saw the effects of the tremendous rush of air. Loaded cars had been lifted and thrown from the track, and the heavy walls with which entrances were blocked had been torn out and the débris scattered through the chambers. We began then to believe that the fall had been a large one, but before we reached the line of it we met a party of twenty-five or thirty men. They were much frightened, and were running in toward the face of the heading, the point from which we had just come. They said that the entire mine had caved in; that the fall had extended close up to the faces of the chambers along the line of solid coal, leaving no possible means of escape in the direction we were going; and that the only safe place in the entire section was the place which we were leaving, at the face of the heading. This heading having been driven for some distance into the solid coal, the fall could not well reach in to the face of it. We were greatly discouraged by the news that these men told us, and we turned back and went with them in to the face of the heading. We had little hope of being able to get out through the body of the fall,――the way in which we did finally escape,――for we knew that the mine had been working, and that the roof had been breaking down that morning in the lower level. Indeed, we could hear it at that moment cracking, crashing, and falling with a great noise. We felt that the only safe place was at the face of the heading where we were, and most of the party clung closely to it. Some of us would go out occasionally to the last entrance to listen and investigate, but the noise of the still falling roof was so alarming that no one dared venture farther. After a long time spent thus in waiting I suggested that we should start out in parties of three or four, so that we should not be in each other’s way, and so that all of us should not be exposed to the same particular danger, and try to make our way through the fall. But the majority of the men were too much frightened to accede to this proposition; they were determined that we should all remain together. So when some of us started out the whole body rushed out after us, and followed along until we came to the line of the fall. We had succeeded in picking our way but a short distance through the fallen portion of the mine when we met my father, Alexander Bryden, coming toward us. He was foreman of the mine. We heard him calling us out before he reached us, and you may be sure that no more welcome sound ever struck upon our ears. He was outside when the fall came, but the thunder of it had scarcely ceased before he started in to learn its extent, and to rescue, if