Then there came upon him the sensation of being in a strange place. It did not seem like the heading along which he went to and from his daily work. He reached out with his cane upon each side, and touched nothing. Surely, there was no place in the heading so wide as that.
But he kept on.
By-and-by he became aware that he was going down a steep incline. The echoes of his footsteps had a hollow sound, as though he were in some wide, open space, and his cane struck one, two, three, props in succession. Then he knew he was somewhere in a chamber; and knew, too, that he was lost.
He sat down, feeling weak and faint, and tried to think. He remembered that, at a point in the heading about two-thirds of the way to the foot, a passage branched off to the right, crossed under the slope, and ran out into the southern part of the mine, where he had never been. He thought he must have turned into this cross-heading, and followed it, and if he had, it would be hard indeed to tell where he now was. He did not know whether to go on or to turn back.
Perhaps it would be better, after all, to sit still until help should come, though it might be hours, or even days, before any one would find him.
Then came a new thought. What would Tom do? Tom would not know where he had gone; he would never think of looking for him away off here; he would go up the heading to the door, and not finding him there, would think that his brother had already gone home. But when he knew that Bennie was not at home, he would surely come back to the mine to search for him; he would come down the slope; maybe he was, at that very moment, at the foot; maybe Tom would hear him if he should call, “Tom! O Tom!”
The loudest thunder-burst could not have been more deafening to the frightened child than the sound of his own voice, as it rang out through the solemn stillness of the mine, and was hurled back to his ears by the solid masses of rock and coal that closed in around him.
A thousand echoes went rattling down the wide chambers and along the narrow galleries, and sent back their ghosts to play upon the nervous fancy of the frightened child. He would not have shouted like that again if his life had depended on it.
Then silence fell upon him; silence like a pall—oppressive, mysterious and awful silence, in which he could almost hear the beating of his own heart. He could not endure that. He grasped his cane again and started on, searching for a path, stumbling over caps, falling sometimes, but on and on, though never so slowly; on and on until, faint and exhausted, he sank down upon the damp floor of the mine, with his face in his hands, and wept, in silent agony, like the lost child that he was.