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These boys were older, stronger, ruder than those in the screen-room; but they were no less human and good-hearted; only one needed to look beneath the rough exterior into their real natures. There were eight of them who took trips in by Ralph's heading, but, for the last half-mile of his route, he was the only driver boy.
The bosses caught this spirit of friendliness, and there was always harmony at Burnham Breaker and in the Burnham mines, among all who labored there in any way whatever. But the screen-room boys had, somehow, come to look upon this man as their especial friend. He sympathized with them.
Ralph looked up at the grim, black monster, and thought of the days gone by; the days of watchfulness, of weariness, of hopeless toil that he had spent shut up within its jarring walls. But they were over now. He should never again climb the narrow steps to the screen-room in the darkness of the early morning.
Billy often thought, as he dumped a carload into the slide, and saw a huge lump of coal that glistened brightly, or glowed with iridescent tints, or was veined with fossil-marked or twisted slate, that perhaps, down below in the screen-room, Ralph's eyes would see the brightness of the broken lump, or Ralph's fingers pick the curious bits of slate from out the moving mass.
The fireman, with face and neck like a lobster, went out, at intervals, and plunged his hands and his head too into the stream of cool water sent out from the mine by the laboring pumps. Up in the screen-room, the boys were sweltering above their chutes, choking with the thick dust, wondering if the afternoon would never be at an end.
He took his accustomed bench in the screen-room, and bent to his task in the old way; but not with the old, light heart and willing fingers. He had thought never to do this again. He had thought that life held for him some higher, brighter, less laborious work. He had thought to gain knowledge, to win fame, to satisfy ambition.
He grew accustomed to the place, however, as the days went by, and then he began not to mind it so much after all. He had more responsibility here, but the work was not so tiresome and monotonous as it had been in the screen-room, and he could be in motion all the time.
Already the first drops were rattling sharply on the breaker's roof, and warning puffs of wind were beating gently against the side of the shaft-tower. "I'm glad Ralph's no' workin' i' the screen-room," said Bachelor Billy, as he put up his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding glare. "It'd be a fearfu' thing to ha' the breaker hit." The fury of the storm was on them at last.
That which I myself would give my fortune for I can never have. I mean my little boy who who died. I cannot have him back. His name too was Ralph." For a few moments there was silence in the screen-room. The child was awed by the man's effort to suppress his deep emotion. At last Ralph said, rising: "Well, I mus' go now an' tell Uncle Billy." Mr. Burnham rose in his turn.
Now, then, you're off to the circus; good-by." The lad took a step or two forward, hesitated a moment, and then turned back. The breaker boss and the screen-room boss were already gone and he was alone with Mr. Burnham. "Would it make any dif'rence to you," he asked, holding up the silver coin, "if I spent this money for sumpthin' else, an' didn't go to the circus with it?"
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