Steve was rushed to the hospital, followed by the superintendent himself. The lad was still unconscious. A hasty examination by the surgeon was made in the presence of the superintendent.
"Well?" Mr. Penton threw a world of meaning into the word.
"No bones are broken. There may be some internal injury. I should judge there might be, from the fact that he is bleeding at the mouth. What happened?"
"He was thrown up by the skip. That's all I know about it now. I want to know whether or not the boy is going to die. Then I will find out how it happened."
After working over the unconscious boy for half an hour, the surgeon decided that there had been a severe concussion that might amount to a fracture. A few hours, he said, would tell the story.
"I'll be back within the hour. Let no efforts be spared to straighten the lad out, if it be possible."
Steve lay limp and pallid, his face almost as white as the sheets of the cot on which he had been placed, and there was a troubled look in the eyes of the big-hearted superintendent as he left the company's hospital and hurried to the shaft.
"Let me off at the seventeenth level," he directed, taking his place in the cage. A few minutes later found him at the chutes where the accident had occurred. Bob, pale-faced and anxious, had been placed at the tally-board and the work of the mine was going on much as usual.
"Please, Mr. Penton, is Steve badly hurt?" demanded the lad, running over to the superintendent the instant he saw him approaching.
"I fear he is, my boy. How did the accident occur?"
"We hear he was carried up on the skip and dropped on the trestle."
"The boy fell through the old trap there," explained the mine captain, approaching at that moment.
"Fell through the trap?" demanded Mr. Penton in surprise.
"Yes, the old trap that was closed several years ago. The men are fixing it so a similar accident won't occur again."
"I didn't see it. The motor-man there can tell you. He is just coming in now."
The motor-man explained that young Rush was hammering at the dump-car catch when the trap gave way beneath him and he went down. That was all that anyone below ground knew about the accident. In fact, that was all there was to tell so far as any one in the mine knew.