It was the bell for lifting. Walter McCartney compressed his lips on receiving the signal, and pulled down the shiny cap over his forehead, as if he himself were about to face that whirlwind of fire six hundred feet down in the bowels of the earth. He drew a long breath and opened the lever for "Full Speed Up." The cage must have passed the zone of flame like a bird rising through a cloud. The folk silenced themselves as it neared the surface. Then a great cry arose.
The minister sat in the cage with a couple of boys in his arms. The rough wet brattice cloths that had been placed over them were charred almost to a cinder. Dairsie Gordon's face was burnt and blackened.
He handed the boys out into careful hands.
"I am going down again," he said; "unless I do the men will not believe that it is possible to come alive through the fire. Are you ready, Walter? Let her go!"
So a second time the young minister went down through the furnace. Presently the men began to be whisked up through the fire, and as each relay arrived at the pit-bank they sang the praises of Dairsie Gordon, telling with Homeric zest how he had crawled half-roasted down the narrow throat of the steam-pipe-filled shaft, how he had argued with them that the fire could be passed, and at last proved it with two boys for volunteer passengers. Dairsie Gordon, B.D., was the last man to leave the pit, and he fainted with pain and excitement when all Drowdle cheered him as they carried him home to his mother.
And when at last he came to himself, swathed in cotton wool to the eyes, he murmured, "Do you not think they will respect me now, mother?"
TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESS
The calm and solemn close of a stormy day—that is the impression which the latter years of the life of Bertram Erskine made on those who knew him best. Though I was young at the time, I well remember his solitary house of Barlochan, a small laird's mansion to which he had added a tiny study and a vast library, turning the whole into an externally curious, but internally comfortable conglomerate of architecture. The house stood near a little green depression of the moorland, shaped like the upturned palm of a hand. In the lowest part was the "lochan" or lakelet from which the place had its name, while the mansion with its white-washed gables and many chimneys rose on the brow above—and, facing south, overlooked well nigh a score of parishes. There was also a garden, half hidden behind a row of straggling poplars. A solitary "John" tended it, who, in the time of Mr. Erskine's predecessor, had doubled his part of gardener with that of butler at the family's evening meal.
Few people in the neighbourhood knew much about the "hermit of Barlochan." Yet he had borne a great part in the politics of twenty years before. He had been a minister of the Queen, a keen and vehement debater, a dour political fighter, as well as a man of some distinction in letters; he had suddenly retired from all his offices and emoluments without a day's warning. The reason given was that he had quite suddenly lost an only and much beloved daughter.
After a few years he had bought, through an Edinburgh lawyer, the little estate of Barlochan, and it was reported that he meant to settle in the district. Upon which ensued a clatter of masons and slaters, joiners and plasterers, all sleeping in stable-lofts, and keeping the scantily peopled moorland parish in a turmoil with their midnight predatory raids and madcap freaks.