The Blind Brother: A Story of the Pennsylvania Coal Mines Read online

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  THE BLIND BROTHER.

  SUNSHINE LIBRARY.

  =Aunt Hannah and Seth.= By James Otis. =Blind Brother (The).= By Homer Greene. =Captain's Dog (The).= By Louis Enault. =Cat and the Candle (The).= By Mary F. Leonard. =Christmas at Deacon Hackett's.= By James Otis. =Christmas-Tree Scholar.= By Frances Bent Dillingham. =Dear Little Marchioness.= The Story of a Child's Faith and Love. =Dick in the Desert.= By James Otis. =Divided Skates.= By Evelyn Raymond. =Gold Thread (The).= By Norman MacLeod, D.D. =Half a Dozen Thinking Caps.= By Mary Leonard. =How Tommy Saved the Barn.= By James Otis. =Ingleside.= By Barbara Yechton. =J. Cole.= By Emma Gellibrand. =Jessica's First Prayer.= By Hesba Stretton. =Laddie.= By the author of "Miss Toosey's Mission." =Little Crusaders.= By Eva Madden. =Little Sunshine's Holiday.= By Miss Mulock. =Little Peter.= By Lucas Malet. =Master Sunshine.= By Mrs. C. F. Fraser. =Miss Toosey's Mission.= By the author of "Laddie." =Musical Journey of Dorothy and Delia.= By Bradley Gilman. =Our Uncle, the Major.= A Story of 1765. By James Otis. =Pair of Them (A).= By Evelyn Raymond. =Playground Toni.= By Anna Chapin Ray. =Play Lady (The).= By Ella Farman Pratt. =Prince Prigio.= By Andrew Lang. =Short Cruise (A).= By James Otis. =Smoky Days.= By Edward W. Thomson. =Strawberry Hill.= By Mrs. C. F. Fraser. =Sunbeams and Moonbeams.= By Louise R. Baker. =Two and One.= By Charlotte M. Vaile. =Wreck of the Circus (The).= By James Otis. =Young Boss (The).= By Edward W. Thomson.

  THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY, NEW YORK.

  THE BLIND BROTHER:

  A Story of THE PENNSYLVANIA COAL MINES

  BY HOMER GREENE

  _The author received for this story the First Prize, Fifteen Hundred Dollars, offered by the_ YOUTH'S COMPANION _in 1886, for the Best Serial Story_

  FOURTEENTH THOUSAND

  NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

  Copyright, 1887, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

  TO

  MY MOTHER,

  WHOSE TENDER CARE AND UNSELFISH DEVOTION MADE HAPPY THE DAYS OF MY OWN BOYHOOD,

  This Book for Boys

  IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR.

  Honesdale, Penn., April 6, 1887.

  CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER PAGE I. LOST IN THE MINE 11 II. THE BURNED BREAKER 30 III. THE UNQUIET CONSCIENCE 50 IV. THE TRIAL 69 V. THE VERDICT 89 VI. THE FALL 109 VII. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 128 VIII. OUT OF DARKNESS 148

  THE BLIND BROTHER.

  CHAPTER I.

  LOST IN THE MINE.

  The Dryden Mine, in the Susquehanna coal-fields of Pennsylvania, wasworked out and abandoned long ago. To-day its headings and airways andchambers echo only to the occasional fall of loosened slate, or to thedrip of water from the roof. Its pillars, robbed by retreating workmen,are crumbling and rusty, and those of its props which are stillstanding have become mouldy and rotten. The rats that once scamperedthrough its galleries deserted it along with human kind, and its veryname, from long disuse, has acquired an unaccustomed sound.

  But twenty years ago there was no busier mine than the Dryden fromCarbondale to Nanticoke. Two hundred and thirty men and boys went bythe slope into it every morning, and came out from it every night. Theywere simple and unlearned, these men and boys, rugged and rude, roughand reckless at times, but manly, heroic, and kindhearted.

  Up in the Lackawanna region a strike had been in progress for nearlytwo weeks. Efforts had been made by the strikers to persuade the minersdown the valley to join them, but at first without success.

  Then a committee of one hundred came down to appeal and to intimidate.In squads of ten or more they visited the mines in the region, and, inthe course of their journeyings, had come to the Dryden Slope. Theyhad induced the miners to go out at all the workings they had thus farentered, and were no less successful here. It required persuasion,sometimes threats, sometimes, indeed, even blows, for the miners inDryden Slope had no cause of complaint against their employers; theyearned good wages, and were content.

  But, twenty years ago, miners who kept at work against the wishes oftheir fellows while a strike was in progress, were called "black-legs,"were treated with contempt, waylaid and beaten, and sometimes killed.

  So the men in the Dryden Mine yielded; and soon, down the chambers andalong the headings, toward the foot of the slope, came little groups,with dinner-pails and tools, discussing earnestly, often bitterly, thesituation and the prospect.

  The members of a party of fifteen or twenty, that came down the airwayfrom the tier of chambers on the new north heading, were holding anespecially animated conversation. Fully one-half of the men werevisiting strikers. They were all walking, in single file, along theroute by which the mine-cars went.

  For some distance from the new chambers the car-track was laid in theairway; then it turned down through an entrance into the heading, andfrom that point followed the heading to the foot of the slope. Wherethe route crossed from the airway to the heading, the space betweenthe pillars had been carefully boarded across, so that the air currentshould 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 hadpassed by.

  That door was attended by a boy.

  To this point the party had now come, and one by one filed through theopening, while Bennie, the door-boy, stood holding back the door to letthem 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 processionturned back to where Bennie, apparently lost in astonishment at thisunusual occurrence, still stood, with his hand on the door.

  "Come along, lad!" he said; "come along! Ye'll have a gret play-spellnoo."

  "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!"

  "But I can't go till Tom comes, anyway, you know."

  The man came a step closer. He had the frame of a giant. The others whopassed by were like children beside him. Then one of the men who workedin the mine, and who knew Bennie, came through the doorway, the last inthe group, and said,--

  "Don't hurt the boy; let him alone. His brother'll take him out; healways does."

  All this time Bennie stood quite still, with his hand on the door,never turning his head.

  It was a strange thing for a boy to stand motionless like that, andlook neither to the right nor the left, while an excited group of menpassed by, one of whom had stopped and approached him, as if he meanthim harm. It roused the curiosity of "Jack the Giant," as the minerscalled him, and, plucking his lamp from his cap, he flashed the lightof it up into Bennie's face.

  The boy did not stir; no muscle of his face moved; even his eyesremained open and fixed.

  "Why, lad! lad! What's the matter wi' ye?" There was tenderness in thegiant's
voice as he spoke, and tenderness in his bearded face as Bennieanswered,--

  "Don't you know? I'm blind."

  "Blind! An' a-workin' i' the mines?"

  "Oh, a body don't have to see to 'tend door, you know. All I've to dois to open it when I hear the cars a-comin', an' to shut it when theyget by."

  "Aye, that's true; but ye did na get here alone. Who helpit ye?"

  Bennie's face lighted up with pleasure, as he answered,--

  "Oh, that's Tom! He helps me. I couldn't get along without him; Icouldn't do _any thing_ without Tom."

  The man's interest and compassion had grown, as the conversationlengthened, and he was charmed by the voice of the child. It had in itthat touch of pathos that often lingers in the voices of the blind. Hewould hear more of it.

  "Sit ye, lad," he said; "sit ye, an' tell me aboot Tom, an' abootyoursel', an' a' ye can remember."

  Then they sat down on the rude bench together, with the roughly hewnpillar of coal at their backs, blind Bennie and Jack Rennie, the giant,and while one told the story of his blindness, and his blessings, andhis hopes, the other listened with tender earnestness, almost withtears.

  Bennie told first about Tom, his brother, who was fourteen years old,two years older than himself. Tom was so good to him; and Tom couldsee, could see as well as anybody. "Why," he exclaimed, "Tom can see_every thing_!"

  Then he told about his blindness; how he had been blind ever sincehe could remember. But there was a doctor, he said, who came up oncefrom Philadelphia to visit Major Dryden, before the major died; and hehad chanced to see Tom and Bennie up by the mines, and had looked atBennie's eyes, and said he thought, if the boy could go to Philadelphiaand have treatment, that sight might be restored.

  Tom asked how much it would cost, and the doctor said, "Oh, maybe ahundred dollars;" and then some one came and called the doctor away,and they had never seen him since.

  But Tom resolved that Bennie should go to Philadelphia, if ever hecould save money enough to send him.

  Tom was a driver-boy in Dryden Slope, and his meagre earnings wentmostly to buy food and clothing for the little family. But the dollaror two that he had been accustomed to spend each month for himself hebegan now to lay aside for Bennie.

  Bennie knew about it, of course, and rejoiced greatly at the prospectin store for him, but expressed much discontent because he, himself,could not help to obtain the fund which was to cure him. Then Tom, withthe aid of the kindhearted mine superintendent, found employment forhis brother as a door-boy in Dryden Slope, and Bennie was happy. Itwasn't absolutely necessary that a door-boy should see; if he had goodhearing he could get along very well.

  So every morning Bennie went down the slope with Tom, and climbedinto an empty mine-car, and Tom's mule drew them, rattling along theheading, till they reached, almost a mile from the foot of the slope,the doorway where Bennie staid.

  Then Tom went on, with the empty cars, up to the new tier of chambers,and brought the loaded cars back. Every day he passed through Bennie'sdoorway on three round trips in the forenoon, and three round trips inthe afternoon; and every day, when the noon-hour came, he stopped onthe down-trip, and sat with Bennie on the bench by the door, and bothate from one pail the dinner prepared for them by their mother.

  When quitting time came, and Tom went down to the foot of the slopewith his last trip for the day, Bennie climbed to the top of a load,and rode out, or else, with his hands on the last car of the trip,walked safely along behind.

  "And Tom and me together have a'most twenty dollars saved now!" saidthe boy exultingly. "An' we've only got to get eighty dollars more, an'then I can go an' buy back the sight into my eyes; an' then Tom an' mewe're goin' to work together all our lives. Tom, he's goin' to get achamber an' be a miner, an' I'm goin' to be Tom's laborer till I learnhow to mine, an' then we're goin' to take a contract together, an' hirelaborers, an' get rich, an' then--why, then Mommie won't have to workany more!"

  It was like a glimpse of a better world to hear this boy talk. The mostfavored child of wealth that ever revelled seeing in the sunlight hashad no hope, no courage, no sublimity of faith, that could compare withthose of this blind son of poverty and toil. He had his high ambition,and that was to work. He had his sweet hope to be fulfilled, and thatwas to see. He had his earthly shrine, and that was where his mothersat. And he had his hero of heroes, and that was Tom.

  There was no quality of human goodness, or bravery, or excellenceof any kind, that he did not ascribe to Tom. He would sooner havedisbelieved all of his four remaining senses than have believed thatTom would say an unkind word to Mommie or to him, or be guilty of amean act towards any one.

  Bennie's faith in Tom was fully justified. No nineteenth century boycould have been more manly, no knight of old could have been more trueand tender, than was Tom to the two beings whom he loved best upon allthe earth.

  "But the father, laddie," said Jack, still charmed and curious;"whaur's the father?"

  "Dead," answered Bennie. "He came from the old country first, an' thenhe sent for Mommie an' us, an' w'en we got here he was dead."

  "Ah, but that was awfu' sad for the mither! Took wi' the fever, was he?"

  "No; killed in the mine. Top coal fell an' struck him. That's the waythey found him. We didn't see him, you know. That was two weeks beforeme an' Tom an' Mommie got here. I wasn't but four years old then, butI can remember how Mommie cried. She didn't have much time to cry,though, 'cause she had to work so hard. Mommie's al'ays had to work sohard," added Bennie, reflectively.

  The man began to move, nervously, on the bench. It was apparent thatsome strong emotion was taking hold of him. He lifted the lamp from hiscap again and held it up close to Bennie's face.

  "Killed, said ye--i' the mine--top coal fell?"

  "Yes, an' struck him on the head; they said he didn't ever know whatkilled him."

  The brawny hand trembled so that the flame from the spout of the littlelamp went up in tiny waves.

  "Whaur--whaur happenit it--i' what place--i' what mine?"

  "Up in Carbondale. No. 6 shaft, I think it was; yes, No. 6."

  Bennie spoke somewhat hesitatingly. His quick ear had caught the changein the man's voice, and he did not know what it could mean.

  "His name, lad! gi' me the father's name!"

  The giant's huge hand dropped upon Bennie's little one, and held it ina painful grasp. The boy started to his feet in fear.

  "You won't hurt me, sir! Please don't hurt me; I can't see!"

  "Not for the warld, lad; not for the whole warld. But I must ha' thefather's name; tell me the father's name, quick!"

  "Thomas Taylor, sir," said Bennie, as he sank back, trembling, on thebench.

  The lamp dropped from Jack Rennie's hand, and lay smoking at his feet.His huge frame seemed to have shrunk by at least a quarter of its size;and for many minutes he sat, silent and motionless, seeing as little ofthe objects around him as did the blind boy at his side.

  At last he roused himself, picked up his lamp, and rose to his feet.

  "Well, lad, Bennie, I mus' be a-goin'; good-by till ye. Will thebrither come for ye?"

  "Oh, yes!" answered Bennie, "Tom al'ays stops for me; he aint come upfrom the foot yet, but he'll come."

  Rennie turned away, then turned back again.

  "Whaur's the lamp?" he asked; "have ye no licht?"

  "No; I don't ever have any. It wouldn't be any good to me, you know."

  Once more the man started down the heading, but, after he had gone ashort distance, a thought seemed to strike him, and he came back towhere Bennie was still sitting.

  "Lad, I thocht to tell ye; ye s'all go to the city wi' your eyes. I ha'money to sen' ye, an' ye s'all go. I--I--knew--the father, lad."

  Before Bennie could express his surprise and gratitude, he felt astrong hand laid gently on his shoulder, and a rough, bearded facepressed for a moment against his own, and then his strange visitor wasgone.

  Down the heading the retreating footsteps echoed, their so
und swallowedup at last in the distance; and up at Bennie's doorway silence reigned.

  For a long time the boy sat, pondering the meaning of the strange man'swords and conduct. But the more he thought about it the less able washe to understand it. Perhaps Tom could explain it, though; yes, hewould tell Tom about it. Then it occurred to him that it was long pasttime for Tom to come up from the foot with his last trip for the day.It was strange, too, that the men should all go out together that way;he didn't understand it. But if Tom would only come--

  He rose and walked down the heading a little way; then he turned andwent up through the door and along the airway; then he came back to hisbench again, and sat down.

  He was sure Tom would come; Tom had never disappointed him yet, and heknew he would not disappoint him for the world if he could help it. Heknew, too, that it was long after quitting-time, and there hadn't beena sound, that he could hear, in the mine for an hour, though he hadlistened carefully.

  After a while he began to grow nervous; the stillness became oppressive;he could not endure it. He determined to try to find the way out byhimself. He had walked to the foot of the slope alone once, the day Tomwas sick, and he thought he could do it again.

  So he made sure that his door was tightly closed, then he took hisdinner-pail, and started bravely down the heading, striking the railsof the mine car-track on each side with his cane as he went along, toguide him.

  Sometimes he would stop and listen, for a moment, if, perchance, hemight hear Tom coming to meet him, or, possibly, some belated laborergoing out from another part of the mine; then, hearing nothing, hewould trudge on again.

  After a long time spent thus, he thought he must be near the foot ofthe slope; he knew he had walked far enough to be there. He was tired,too, and sat down on the rail to rest. But he did not sit there long;he could not bear the silence, it was too depressing, and after a verylittle while he arose and walked on. The caps in the track grew higher;once he stumbled over one of them and fell, striking his side on therail. He was in much pain for a few minutes; then he recovered and wenton more carefully, lifting his feet high with every step, and reachingahead with his cane. But his progress was very slow.

  Then there came upon him the sensation of being in a strange place. Itdid not seem like the heading along which he went to and from his dailywork. 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 insome wide, open space, and his cane struck one, two, three, props insuccession. 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 rememberedthat, at a point in the heading about two-thirds of the way to thefoot, a passage branched off to the right, crossed under the slope, andran out into the southern part of the mine, where he had never been. Hethought 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. Hedid not know whether to go on or to turn back.

  Perhaps it would be better, after all, to sit still until help shouldcome, though it might be hours, or even days, before any one would findhim.

  Then came a new thought. What would Tom do? Tom would not know wherehe had gone; he would never think of looking for him away off here; hewould go up the heading to the door, and not finding him there, wouldthink that his brother had already gone home. But when he knew thatBennie was not at home, he would surely come back to the mine to searchfor him; he would come down the slope; maybe he was, at that verymoment, 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 thefrightened child than the sound of his own voice, as it rang outthrough the solemn stillness of the mine, and was hurled back to hisears by the solid masses of rock and coal that closed in around him.

  A thousand echoes went rattling down the wide chambers and along thenarrow galleries, and sent back their ghosts to play upon the nervousfancy of the frightened child. He would not have shouted like thatagain if his life had depended on it.

  Then silence fell upon him; silence like a pall--oppressive, mysteriousand awful silence, in which he could almost hear the beating of his ownheart. He could not endure that. He grasped his cane again and startedon, searching for a path, stumbling over caps, falling sometimes,but on and on, though never so slowly; on and on until, faint andexhausted, he sank down upon the damp floor of the mine, with his facein his hands, and wept, in silent agony, like the lost child that hewas.

  Lost, indeed, with those miles and miles of black galleries openingand winding and crossing all around him, and he, lying prostrate andpowerless, alone in the midst of that desolation.