From the south and opposite bank of the stream rose a steep bluff perhaps two hundred feet high. Rows of unpainted houses ran along the river bank and were scattered in a more or less haphazard way over the face of the bluff; their ugliness softened by trees which grew in abundance on the steep slopes. The most striking feature of the picture was a great iron mill to the left. It filled acres of land along the south river bank, its huge black stacks, from which smoke streamed straight to the east, rose formal and imperative. They were amazingly decorative in the soft, late September day, against the green of the south bluff, and curiously dominating. "We are the strong things here," they said to him,--"the things to be reckoned with." As Dick walked down the long hill looking for a hotel, he felt more of his old joy in discovery, more of his old zestful curiosity than in many a day. The beauty of the place, the strong note of distinction the mills made in the picture, had finally stirred him. His interest was further aroused when he walked straight up to the quaint front of the Hotel Paradise. It was like things he had seen years before in the South; a long, brick building with steep roof and tiny gables fronted by narrow verandas with slender, girlish, iron pillars. The arched door was perfect in its proportions, and the big stone hall was cool and inviting. But once inside, Dick suddenly realized that somebody had had the sense, while preserving all the quaintness of a building of at least a hundred years before, so to fashion and enlarge it as to make a thoroughly comfortable, modern hotel. His curiosity was piqued, though it happened to be years before he learned how the Paradise had been preserved. The night brought Dick rest, but the morning found his flare of interest dead. He made his pack with a dull need of moving on, and he would have done so if, when he came into the office, he had not found there a group of white-faced, horrified men. He caught the words, "On fire." "One hundred and fifty men shut in." "No hope." A word of inquiry and he learned that at a near-by coal mine, they spoke of as the "Emma," there had been a terrible disaster. He learned too that help of all sorts was being hurried to the place by the "spur," which, as he rightly guessed, was the road connecting the mine with the main line of the railroad which he had traced the night before along the south bank of the river. Dick drank a cup of coffee and followed a hurrying crowd to where an engine and two coal cars rapidly filling with all the articles of relief that on the instant could be gathered, were just ready to leave. Quickly sensing the leader, a young man of not over twenty-five, Dick said, "I'm a stranger, but I might be useful. I understand something of relief work. I speak languages. I would be glad to go." The man gave him an appraising look. "Jump in," he said curtly. A moment later they were off.