So the men in the Dryden Mine yielded; and soon, down the chambers and along the headings, toward the foot of the slope, came little groups, with dinner-pails and tools, discussing earnestly, often bitterly, the situation and the prospect.
The members of a party of fifteen or twenty, that came down the airway from the tier of chambers on the new north heading, were holding an especially animated conversation. Fully one-half of the men were visiting strikers. They were all walking, in single file, along the route by which the mine-cars went.
For some distance from the new chambers the car-track was laid in the airway; then it turned down through an entrance into the heading, and from that point followed the heading to the foot of the slope. Where the route crossed from the airway to the heading, the space between the pillars had been carefully boarded across, so that the air current should not be turned aside; and a door had been placed in the boarding, to be opened whenever the cars approached, and shut as soon as they had passed by.
That door was attended by a boy.
To this point the party had now come, and one by one filed through the opening, while Bennie, the door-boy, stood holding back the door to let them pass.
“Ho, Jack, tak’ the door-boy wi’ ye!” shouted some one in the rear.
The great, broad-shouldered, rough-bearded man who led the procession turned back to where Bennie, apparently lost in astonishment at this unusual occurrence, still stood, with his hand on the door.
“Come along, lad!” he said; “come along! Ye’ll have a gret play-spell noo.”
“I can’t leave the door, sir,” answered Bennie. “The cars’ll be comin’ soon.”
“Ye need na min’ the cars. Come along wi’ ye, I say!”