Inglis Collection of printed music > Printed text > Martin Craghan

14 Martin Craghan.
men— it was her husband — put his pick aside,
and lifted her into the cage. "Poor little
mother," he said, "go home and wait;" and
then he set to work again. Kind hands
brought back the life to her eyes, and laid
her down to wait at the mouth of the pit ;
but she would not go home.
So it went on for four hours more ; then,
from the foremost man, a shout came back.
Martin Craghan leant on his pick, and lis-
tened. "What have you found, lads'?" he
shouted back, hoarsely.
The answer woke the echoes of the passage,
and woke, also, a dead hope in Martin's heart.
"A child."
"Alive?"
"Yes."
The glad answer went pealing all along
the dark tunnels of coal, and was carried up
by rough, kind voices, into the grey, summer
dawn. A pretty, care-worn woman, kneeling
at the pit's mouth, leant her face over the
shaft, and spoke under her breath — peering
down, as if even her loving eyes could pierce
the darkness : " Thank God," she said, " for
my little, living child."
So they found him — encaged in the prison
that had so much the semblance of a tomb ; and
they paused, and turned, wonderstruck, to one
another, when, out of the ruin and confusion