2018.06.30

It's Saturday.

Ma sobbed that she didn’t want a well and it wasn’t worth it and she wouldn’t have they running such risks. Mr. Scott had breathed a kind of gas that stays deep in the ground. It stays at the bottom of wells because it is heavier than the air. It cannot be seen or smelled, but no one can breathe it very long and live. Pa had gone down into that gas to tie Mr. Scott to the rope, so that he could be pulled up out of the gas. When Mr. Scott was able, he went home. Before he went he said to Pa that Pa had been right about that candle business and he had thought it had been all foolishness and he would not bother with it, and he had found out his mistake. Pa said that where a light couldn’t live, he knew he couldn’t, and he liked to be safe when he could be, but all was well that ended well. Pa rested awhile. He had breathed a little of the gas and he felt like resting. But that afternoon he raveled a thread from a tow sack, and he took a little powder from his powder-horn. He tied the powder in a piece of cloth with one end of the tow string in the powder. He asked Laura to come along and told her that he would show her something. They went to the well. Pa lighted the end of the string and waited till the spark was crawling quickly along it. Then he dropped the little bundle into the well. In a minute they heard a muffled bang! And a puff of smoke came out of the well. Pa said that would bring the gas. When the smoke was all gone, he let Laura light the candle and stand beside him while he let it down. All the way down in the dark hole the little candle kept on burning like a star.