The papers told of the crowds gathering, of the Red Cross, of the experts come to consider the situation, of the line of patient women, with shawls over their heads, waiting always, there at the first gray light, there when night fell; the girl, gasping at her window, would have given years of her life to have stood with those women. The second day she read that they had closed the mouth of the shaft; it was considered that the one chance for life below lay in smothering the flames. When the girl read that, a madness came on her. The shawled women felt that same madness; if the inspectors and the company officials had insisted they could not have kept the mine closed long--the people would have opened it by force; it was felt unendurable to seal their men below; the shaft was unsealed in twenty-four hours. But the smoke came out, and then the watchers realized that a wall of flame was worse than a wall of planks and sand, and the shaft was closed again. For days there was no news; then the first fruitless descent; then men went down and brought up heavy shapes rolled in canvas and bore them to the women; and "each morning the Red Cross president, lifting the curtain of the car where he slept, would see at first light the still rows of those muffled figures waiting in the hopeless daybreak." Not yet had the body of the young superintendent been found; yet one might not hope because of that. But when one afternoon the head-lines of the papers blazed with a huge "Rescued," she could not read it, and she knew that she had hoped. It was true. Eighteen men had been brought up alive, and Johnny McLean was one. Johnny McLean carried out senseless, with an arm broken, with a gash in his forehead done by a falling beam as he crawled to hail the rescuers--but Johnny McLean alive. He was very ill, yet the girl had not a minute's doubt that he would get well.