The day book. [volume], February 15, 1913, 2, Image 18

About The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
THE MAN IN THE PIT
By H. M. Egbert.
The clanging bell had roused
the countryside. It was no un
accustomed sound, the deep, dull
reverberations which called the
men to work in the gray hours of
morning, struck sharply for the
noon recess, and tolled more
He Felt Las i-ungs Bursting.
soberly as it seemed at six,
when the day's toil was over. But
those three sharp staccato calls,
the seconds of silence, and again
the three brazen alarms meant
only one thing. There had been
an accident at the mine.
It had been a fancy of old Pen
nyman to place a bell at the pit
head in place of the accustomed
whistle perhaps becauce, in that
overcrow ded factory and mining
region, whistles were too plenti
ful to be readily distinguishable.
But for five years the bell had
tolled each day, and never before
had the three threatening calls
resounded.
"Nine men cut off by fire
damp," ran the word, and every
one knew what that meant. Vol- j
unteers were already below,
searching among the galleries for
the unconscious victims of that
deadly outpour of asphyxiating
gases from the clefts and seams.
One woman stood apart from
the rest; unlike the rest, too, she
had no child. She was an Amer
ican, barely thirty, one would
have said; she stood trembling,
but with averted .eyes. She had
no wish to look down into that
inferno. One of the guards ap
proached her. He had not seen
her for three years.
"You, Mary!" he stammered
awkwardly. "Why don't you go
home ? Everything will come out
right."
She raised her haunted eyes to
his. ''John, is my my husband
down" there?" she asked quietly,
and he bowed his head.
Three years before John Pas
coe and Mary Evans had been
sweethearts. Their marriage day
had been set, even the house fur
nished, when the bitter quarrel
arose which had destroyed their
happiness. The cause was trivial,
as often happens, but the quarrel
became the harsher. Words pass
ed and Mary threw the ring into
Evans' face.
"Never come back to me," she
said as she turned away. She
waited for him to return, but