No wonder they
adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when
she went into the camp, into the pits--for she went down to see the men
work--or into a sick miner's shack; and many a man, lonely and sick
for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and
comfort and courage, and to many a poor broken wretch that room became,
as one miner put it, "the anteroom to heaven."'
Mr. Craig paused, and I waited. Then he went on slowly--
'For a year and a half that was the happiest home in all the world, till
one day--'
He put his face in his hands, and shuddered.
'I don't think I can ever forget the awful horror of that bright fall
afternoon, when "Old Ricketts" came breathless to me and gasped, "Come!
for the dear Lord's sake," and I rushed after him. At the mouth of
the shaft lay three men dead. One was Lewis Mavor. He had gone down to
superintend the running of a new drift; the two men, half drunk with
Slavin's whisky, set off a shot prematurely, to their own and Mavor's
destruction.
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