"Father, please be careful. Watch him, Mr. Steering,--O-h-h-h!" A woman's cry of horror rang though the tunnelled walls as Madeira's great frame toppled on the edge of the crag, and disappeared. Throwing out his right arm protectingly, as though in answer to the girl below, Steering had been able to knot the sinewy fingers of one hand about Madeira's collar as the latter fell. The force of the fall brought Steering to his knees, then flat out across the ledge, to get all the purchase power he could. Madeira's weight was terrific, even after Steering had brought his other hand into requisition; and though Throcker sprang to the rescue, Throcker was a weak man and the best aid that he could render was to assume a small share of Madeira's weight by getting down flat upon the ledge, after Steering's fashion. In the black hole below the miners saw what had happened and two burly men began to clamber up the treacherous slope. "Gently, boys, gently," warned Throcker, as the men came on; he and Steering could feel the rock upon which they lay vibrate; there was a rending and splitting going on all through the ledge. "Can you hold on a minute alone, sir?" gasped Throcker suddenly. "I have a bad heart and it's going back on me,"--he fell weakly beside Steering. "Yes, I can hold on alone." Steering's face was in the loose crush, and his lips were cut by the rock when he opened them, so he stopped trying to talk. "Get back, Mr. Throcker--let me get my hands down and help Mr. Steering." It was the girl's voice, and the girl was beside Steering, quiet and capable. "Oh, you?" said Steering. He had known all these seconds that he was doing this for her, but the strain that he was on had somehow pulled him beyond the comprehension of her as actual; for the last ten seconds she had been rather a big abstraction, a high principle of his soul, a good desire in his heart. To see her there before him was to see abstraction, principle, desire becoming adequately incarnate. "No, you mustn't try to reach down here,--your arms aren't long enough,--the commotion on the edge here is dangerous,--if you will just put something, your handkerchief, under my face where the sharp little rocks are at it,--ah, you should not have done _that_!"--she had slipped her hands beneath his face, and the touch of her fingers was like velvet as she worked away the sticking, stinging bits of ore and rock that worried him. He had not known how chief a part in his sensation of discomfort those bits had played until he could bury his face in the relief of her soft hands. As a matter of fact, with those bits out of his cheeks,--and his face in her hands,--he felt no great discomfort at all. If it had not been for her shivering sigh of relief he would have been sorry when the miners drew Madeira up. Madeira had not spoken, and he was purple as they carried him to a place of safety some distance back on the ledge.