The cottage to which Jeckie had removed her father and herself, and such household belongings as were absolutely necessary to their simple standard of comfort, faced due east; consequently, when the sun rose above the fringe of woods that morning its beams shone direct into the little living-room. And they fell full on Jeckie, who sat bolt upright at the table, her hands stretched out and tightly clasped on its surface, her eyes staring straight in front of her, her lips white and set. So she had sat for hours—motionless, silent. The tall clock in the corner had ticked away its record of minutes; the darkness had gone; the grey light had stolen in; there had come a glow in the skies and a gradual lighting of the window; finally, the sun had shown a ruddy, round face above the tapering pines and firs on the hilltop behind the Leys, and in the meadows and orchards the blackbirds and thrushes had begun to pipe and trill. But the breaking of a new day had caused no change in Jeckie Farnish's attitude. It was, said Farnish, talking of it after to his cronies, as if she had been turned into stone.

"Theer wor niver a word out on her, poor lass, after I'd telled her what I'd gathered up at t'church porch," said he. "When she heeard 'at yon Ben Scholes had paid fellers three hundred pound to blow up t'pit she collapsed, as they call it, into t'chair and ligged her hand on t'table, and theer she sat, starin' and starin', hour after hour, till I wor fair afraid! I leeted t'lamp, and made t'fire, and brewed a pot a' tea, but I couldn't get her to put her lips to it. Wheer I laid t'cup at her side at four o'clock, theer it wor at seven—untasted. And not one word did she spake, all that time—nobbut sat and stared and stared i' front on her, as if she'd see summat. An happen she did see summat—how can I say?"

But Jeckie moved at last. As Farnish, well-nigh beyond his wits with fear and anxiety, stood by the hearth, watching her, a hurried step sounded on the flagged path outside the cottage, and Robinson, the manager, came hastening in, grimy and dishevelled. She stirred then; but it was only the stirrings of a burning eye and a dry lip.

"Well?" she said, in such a faint whisper that both men started and looked anxiously at her. "Well? Speak!"

Robinson threw out both hands with a gesture of despair. "It's worse than I thought!" he answered, huskily. "No use pretending it isn't; it's far worse. We've made as thorough an examination as we could, and it's terrible to see what damage has been done. Work of all this time—many a long month!—all destroyed, in both shafts. They're blocked with wreckage! Brickwork, ironwork, everything's been blown out in both. The downcast's the worst. And—and that's not all!"

"What is all?" asked Jeckie. "Say it! I want to know."

Robinson glanced at Farnish, and Jeckie was quick to interpret the look. She turned on her father as if he had been a house dog.

"Go out!" she commanded. "Outside!—and shut the door. Now then," she demanded as Farnish hurried into the garden and pulled the door tight after him. "Say it straight out! What is—all?"

Robinson dropped into a chair and for a moment rested his head on his hands; when he raised it again his face was as white as Jeckie's.

"I've been down that down-cast shaft, through the wreckage, as far as I could—Hargreaves and I went down, an hour since," he replied. "You never saw such a sight!—those fellows must have used some explosive that's more powerful than anything we've ever used for ordinary blasting. Those heavy cast-iron plates that we used for that stretch of tubbing, now—twisted and curled as if they'd been sheets of paper—ribs, brackets, flanges—I couldn't have believed that such things could have been, well, just made into ribbons, as if they'd been no more than putty. The timbering and the masonry, of course, are just so much splinters and dust, but the ironwork—well, it beats me how it's happened! Still, in time, all that could be put right—there'd be long delay, to be sure, and awful expense—all would have to be done over again—it's like starting all over again, but——"

He paused, shook his head, shivered a little as if at some recollection, and for a moment seemed as if he had lost the thread of his story.

"Get on to what there is of the rest of it!" commanded Jeckie. "There's more!"

Robinson started; the last word appeared to spur him up.

"More!" he exclaimed, almost emphatically. "More? Yes more!—lots more. The worst of it! My God!"

"Will you get it out?" said Jeckie, in a low voice that betrayed her concentrated anxiety. "Say it, man. I want to know."

Robinson made an effort, and pulled himself together. He gave Jeckie a queer, sidelong glance.

"I went down, through the wreckage, as far as I could," he said. "And—there's been more than the mere blowing up of timber and masonry, and iron fittings. We heard it, down there; heard it unmistakably—me and Hargreaves. I heard it; he heard it. Oh, yes; there's no doubt of it. The explosion must have blown out a tremendous lot of wall surface stuff in the lowest workings they'd got to, where they hadn't started any masonry or tubbing, you understand. Because—we heard! No mistaking it! Once—just once—I've heard it before. Never to be forgotten, that—no!"

"For God's sake, man, speak plainly!" said Jeckie. "Heard—what!"

Robinson glanced fearfully around him as he bent nearer to her. He spoke but one word, in a tense whisper.

"Water!"

Jeckie started back, and her drawn face grew white to the lips. She, too, spoke the word he had spoken, in a lower whisper than his.

"Water!"

Robinson edged his chair near to the table and tapped the edge with a forefinger on which there was both grime and blood.

"I tell you we heard it—me and Hargreaves," he said. "I say—no mistaking it. This explosion, now—it must have blown a pretty considerable hole into the lowest part of the shaft, where they've been at work this last week or two, and it's released—it may be a thin bed of quicksand that we didn't suspect, or water-logged sandstone or sand, or something of that sort, if you follow me, but there's the fact—water! It's running into the shaft at, I should say, the rate of thousands of gallons a minute; we could hear it fairly roaring down there. It's no use; it's there!"

"What'll happen?" asked Jeckie in a curiously hard voice.

"The shafts'll be flooded to the brim in twenty-four hours," answered Robinson. "To the brim!'

"You said shafts!" exclaimed Jeckie.

"It's running into the up-cast, too," said Robinson. "We examined that. There must have been—must be—an extensive bed of quicksand lying between both shafts. Anyhow, it's there. I tell you, they'll be flooded to the brim!"

Jeckie's mind went back to a certain conversation she had once had with Revis, of Heronshawe Main. He too, had met with an obstacle in water, and had surmounted it.

"But it can be pumped out?" she suggested.

"Aye!" assented Robinson. "But how long will it take as things are, and how long after that to get matters put as straight as they were last night, and how much will it cost? It's no use denying it—all that we've done, all that we'd arrived at, is just—ruined!"

Jeckie suddenly got up from the table. She went across to the window, and pulling aside the half-curtain that veiled the lower panes, looked out across the Leys. The surface works of the new pit were either levelled with the ground or showing gaunt and ruinous against the sky-line; crowds of curious sightseers were grouped about them; above everything, a sinister blot on the otherwise sun-filled sky, a cloud of yellow smoke still hung, heavy and significant, as if loath to float away from the scene of destruction. And as suddenly as she had risen from her seat so she turned on Robinson with a quick movement and with a flash of her old spirit. "But the coal's still there!" she exclaimed. "The coal's still there—to be got!"

Robinson looked at her for a moment in silence. Of late she had taken him into her confidence, pretty deeply, and she suddenly saw of what he was thinking. Money!—always money! And she began to think, too, of the money that had gone into the pit, and of how much more would be wanted now to recover what had so gone. It was as if one had lost a sovereign down some grating in the street, and must needs pay another to get it back.

"I say the coal's still there!" she repeated with fierce insistence. "To be got, do you hear? It's got to be got—that water'll have to be pumped out, and everything put in order again, and do you think I'm going to lose all I've laid out?" she went on, suddenly beating her fist on the table. "We must get to work at once!"

Robinson moved his head from side to side; something in the movement suggested difficulty, perhaps hopelessness.

"It's for you to decide," he said, dully. "It'll cost—I don't know what it won't cost. If you'd hear that water pouring in! And as things are, the shafts cumbered up with ruin; we can do nothing to stop it."

Jeckie snatched up her ulster, and began to put it on.

"Come on!" she said, turning to the door. "I'm going there myself."

Robinson sighed heavily as he pulled himself out of his chair and followed her into the sunlight. And he sighed again and shook his head as they set out across the Leys in the direction of the wrecked pit.

"There's naught to be done at present," he said, dejectedly. "It'll be days before we know the full extent of the damage. And we shall have to wait till we find out how high this water's going to rise—we don't know yet what weight there is behind it, down there. We're all in the dark."

"Something's got to be done!" declared Jeckie. Badly shaken though she was, a flash of her old indomitable spirit still woke to life at odd moments. "We can't stand about doing nothing," she went on. "The coal's there, I tell you!"

There were plenty of people standing about, doing nothing, on the edge of the scene of disaster, and among them Albert and Lucilla Grice. Lucilla was in tears, and Albert was in apparently heated argument with some of the officials, who turned to Robinson as he and Jeckie drew near.

"Mr. Grice is blaming us because he says there ought to have been a watch kept over these shafts," said one of them. "I've told him there were watchmen."

"Then how comes it that somebody could get down there and place these explosives where they did," demanded Albert. "Don't tell me! There's been no proper watch kept at all, or this couldn't ha' happened. And all my wife's money invested in this!—and blown to pieces!"

He gave Jeckie a sidelong glance, as if laying the blame on her shoulders. He chanced to be in her way where he stood, and she unceremoniously elbowed him aside.

"Your wife's money!" she snarled as she passed him. "What's her bit o' money compared to what I've put in? Come on, Robinson—I'm going down that shaft as far as I can—to find out how things are."

"It's dangerous," said Robinson. "We risked a lot, me and Hargreaves."

"Where you've been I can go—and I'm going," declared Jeckie. "Come on—we'll go together."

The others, standing round, watched Jeckie's descent into the tangled mass of iron, wood, masonry; she herself, following her manager, cared nothing for danger, and was only intent on listening for the dread sound of which he had spoken. And, at last, when they had made their way a good two hundred feet into the shaft, penetrating through broken and twisted plates and girders, Robinson paused and held up the lantern he was carrying as a sign that they could go no farther.

"Listen!" he said in a whisper. "You'll hear!"

Jeckie steadied herself among the wreckage, looking down the darkness beneath it. And suddenly, in the silence that hung all round them, she heard, far below, in the gloomy depths which her imagination pictured the steady, heavy rush of water. It was unmistakable—and once again she felt sick in heart and brain, and weak of body.

"It's increased in volume since I was down," muttered Robinson as he stood at her side. "It's as I said before—the pit'll be flooded out. There's no help for it. It must be rising fast, that water."

He tore away a loose piece of iron from the wreckage close by, and dropped it through the twisted mass beneath their standing place. The sound of its heavy splash came almost at once.

"You hear!" he exclaimed. "It's within thirty or forty feet of us now! It'll be up here before long; it'll rise to the brim. There's nothing to be done, Miss Farnish—we'd best make our way up again."

When Jeckie climbed out of the last mass of wreckage at the mouth of the shaft, it was to find Revis standing close by, talking to the men who hung about. He came up to her with a face full of grave concern.

"This is a bad job, my lass!" he said in low tones. "I'm as sorry for you as I can be!" He turned from her to Robinson. "Water rising?" he asked.

"Aye, fast as it can!" answered Robinson. "There must have been a tremendous lot released right down where they'd got to. And we were close on to the seam, too!"

"Rising in both shafts?" inquired Revis.

Robinson gave him a significant look.

"Both!" he answered.

Revis drew him aside; the others, watching them, heard the two men talking technicalities; Jeckie caught chance terms and expressions here and there—"water-laden bed"; "dangerous feeder"; "water-logged trias"; "drainage tunnel"; "Poetsch's method"; "Gebhardt and Koenig's method"; "Kind-Chaudron system"; "winding and pumping"—she understood little or nothing of it, and at that moment did not care to inquire; all that she realised was that the work into which she had put so much energy, and whereon she had laid out all her beloved money, was in danger of utter ruin. She let Albert grumble and growl to the men, and Lucilla weep fretfully; she herself stood silent and motionless, watching Revis and the manager.

Revis came to her at last, motioning Albert and Lucilla to join them. He looked graver than before.

"This is a very bad job!" he said in a low voice. "There seems to be no doubt that this explosive, whatever it was—and it must have been of extraordinary force—has tapped an exceptionally heavy lot of water. The mine'll be flooded—that is, these two shafts will. It's a good job you hadn't got the whole thing finished and opened out, for in that case, if this explosion had happened, you'd have had all the workings flooded, and there'd probably have been serious loss of life. As it is——"

Jeckie interrupted him—the question of what might have been had no interest for her.

"Can't the water be pumped out?" she asked. "You had trouble yourself that way?"

"Aye, you can pump!" agreed Revis. "But—you don't know what amount of water there is yet. It looks to me, from what Robinson says, as if there was a sort of subterranean lake down there. Pump, aye!—but ... a long and terrible job. And—now don't be frightened!—the thing is—will it be worth it?"

"The coal's there!" exclaimed Jeckie, dogged and determined.

Revis looked from her to the Grices. Lucilla was grasping a tear-soaked handkerchief and gazing at him in the last throes of despairing anxiety; Albert stood with his lips a little open, expectant of wisdom from the man of experience.

"Yes," said Revis, at last. "But—it's no use shirking difficulties—this may be a quicksand that forms a thick cover all over the measures of whatever extent they may be. The fact is—you don't know what's happened down there, nor where you are."

"The coal's there!" repeated Jeckie. "It's there, I say! We've got to get it."