“’Ess,” Ralph declared, with unusual persistence, “Me do!”
“No,” father reiterated. He opened the door, and we slipped out, followed for some distance along the trail by the deserted youngster’s ear-splitting shrieks. Father halted once, looking irresolutely at me as a peculiarly heart-rending outburst came to our ears. “I could easily carry him up there,” he said, with a somewhat sheepish look, “but I suppose you couldn’t fetch him home?”
“Come along, father,” I retorted, slipping my hand under his arm. “Jessie will have Ralph consoled before you could get back to the house, and, when we started, you were in some doubt as to whether I could carry a spade home from the mine.”
“That’s true,” father confessed. “But hasn’t the boy got a pair of lungs, though? I doubt if I was ever able to yell like that. I dare say it’s partly owing to the climate; it’s very healthy.”
CHAPTER II
THE WILL OF THE WATERS
Crusoe was the generic name of the collection of rough shanties that clustered about and among the various shaft-houses. Not all of the mines had attained to the dignity of shaft-houses and regular hours, many of them, indeed, being mere prospect-holes, but all were named, and a student of human nature might have accurately gauged the past experience or present hopefulness of their respective owners by some of the curious freaks of nomenclature.