Something gripped him and stood him on his feet, and before he realized what he was doing he was running, gasping, tripping and falling headlong, only to spring up and run again, with all thoughts trampled out and beaten down by one: would he still be in time? There was something wrong with the dumping machinery of the slag-car, and two men were working with it on the side away from the spilling slope. Gordon had not breath wherewith to shout; moreover the safety-valve was still screeching to gulf all human cries. Farley was lying face down and motionless, with the twisted foot still held fast in a wedge-shaped crack in the cooled slag. Tom bent and lifted him; yelled, swore, tugged, strained, kicked fiercely at the imprisoned shoe-heel. Still the vise-grip held, and the great kettle on the height above was creaking and slowly careening under the winching of the engine crew. If the molten torrent should plunge down the slope now, there would be two human cinders instead of one. Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood, spent itself, leaving him cool and determined. Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, and he remembered afterward that he had been collected enough to choose and open the sharper of the two blades. There was a quick, sure slash at the shoe-lacing and the crippled foot was freed. With another yell, this time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden and backed away with it in the tilting half-second when the deluge of slag, firing the very air with shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope. Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and fainted as a woman might--when the thing was done. XXXVI FREE AMONG THE DEAD The skirmish-line rivulets of melted slag had crept to within a few feet of the two at the toe of the dump when the men of the engine crew ran with water to drench them. Tom recovered consciousness under the dashing of the water, and was one of the bearers who carried Vincent Farley on a hastily improvised stretcher to the surrey waiting at the office gate. Afterward, he went for Doctor Williams, deriding himself Homerically for playing the second act in the drama of the Good Samaritan, but playing it, none the less. And not to quit before he was quite through, he drove with the physician to Warwick Lodge, and sat in the buggy till the other Good Samaritan had performed his office. "Nothing very serious, is it, Doctor?" he asked, when the old physician took the reins to drive his horse-holder home. "H'm; he'll be rather badly scarred, and there is a chance that he will lose the sight of one eye," was the reply. Then: "It's none of my quarrel, Tom, but you hammered him pretty cruelly--with a stone, too, I should say." "Did I?" grinned Tom. He was willing to bear the blame until Kincaid should have ample time to disappear. "Yes; and with all due allowance for your provocation, it was a good bit beneath you, my boy."