Book 3 — THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN.

Certainly matters were in a serious state in the Mirkley Colliery district. The whole industrial world was unsettled at the time. There had been trouble on the railways, and a great shipyard strike was threatening in Scotland. Most serious of all, the men were beginning to defy their own leaders. They had taken to organising little sectional revolts of their own, and Employers' Federations were beginning to ask how they could be expected to ratify treaties with Trades Union officials who were unable to hold their own followers to the terms of agreements concluded on their behalf.

The Mirkley district had caught the infection. The mischief had originated at Marbledown and Cherry Hill, the immediate cause of the trouble being a simple question of weights and measures.

The ordinary collier is paid by piecework—so much per ton for all the coal he hews. This coal is carefully weighed on coming to the surface, and to ensure fair play all round the weight is checked by the men's own representative at the pit-head. Now just as all is not gold that glitters, so all that comes to the surface of the earth from the interior of a coal-pit is not necessarily coal. A good deal of it is shale, stone, and the like—technically summarised as "dirt"—and has to be sorted out from the genuine article by a bevy of young ladies retained at some expense for the purpose. As colliers are paid for hewing coal and not dirt, the mine managers, reckoning one hundredweight as the average weight of dirt in a tub of coal, had been in the habit, when making out their pay-sheets, of deducting this amount from the total weight of each load brought to the surface. Hinc lacrymæ. The man in the pit claimed that he should be paid for all he sent up the shaft, alleging that it was impossible to separate coal from dirt at the face, and that dirt was quite as difficult to hew as coal. To this those in authority replied that a collier is a man who is employed to hew coal and not dirt, and that as such he should only be paid for the coal he hewed. It was a nice point, and so high did feeling run upon the subject, and so fierce was the demeanour of their employés, that pliable Mr Aymer and pusillanimous Mr Montague yielded to the extent of fifty-six pounds, and henceforth each toiler in Cherry Hill and Marbledown Colliery was debited with one half instead of one whole hundredweight of dirt per tub.

Encouraged by the success of their colleagues, the men employed at Sir John Carr's great pit at Belton proffered a similar request. But though the request was the same its recipient was different. Sir John greeted the deputation with disarming courtesy, and announced in a manner which precluded argument that on the question of the owners' right to deduct for dirt in each load he would not yield one inch. On this the deputation rashly changed their ground and alleged that the toll of one hundredweight per tub was excessive. Whereupon Juggernaut whisked them off without delay to the pit-head. Here a minute examination was made of the contents of the next ten tubs of coal which came to the surface, and it was found that, so far from defrauding his employés, Juggernaut was defrauding himself, for the average weight of dirt in each tub was not one hundred and twelve but one hundred and thirty pounds.

"You see, Mr Brash?" said Sir John cheerfully. "I am afraid you have all been in my debt to the extent of eighteen pounds of coal per tub for quite a considerable number of years. However, if you will be sensible and go back to work, we will call it a wash-out and say no more about it."

Then he departed to London.

But he had to return. The half-hundredweight of Cherry Hill and Marbledown outbalanced Belton's plain facts and ocular demonstrations. The Pit "came out" en masse, against the advice and without the authority of their Union officials; and for two or three weeks men loafed up and down the long and unlovely street which comprised Belton village, smoking their pipes and organising occasional whippet-races against the time when the despot who employed them should be pleased to open negotiations.

But the despot made no sign. Presently pipes were put away for want of tobacco, and whippet-racing ceased for want of stake-money. Then came a tightening of belts and a setting of teeth, and men took to sitting on their heels against walls and fences, punctuating recrimination by expectoration, through another four long and pitiful weeks.

Not so utterly pitiful though. For a wonderful thing happened. The unknown benefactor of the strike of seven years ago came to life again. Every morning the postman delivered to the wife of each man in Belton a packet containing a ration of tea, sugar, and (once a week) bacon. Coal, too, was distributed by a mysterious motor-lorry, bearing a London number-plate, and manned by two sardonic Titans, who deposited their sacks and answered no questions. So there was no actual destitution in the village. But there was no beer, and no tobacco, and no money. Women and children can live for an amazingly long time on tea and sugar eked out by a little bread, but man is the slave of an exacting stomach, and requires red meat for the upkeep of his larger frame. The whippets, too, had to be considered; and when, after an interval of seven weeks, a notice went up on the gates of the pit buildings, intimating that all who returned to work on the following Monday would be reinstated without question, Belton Colliery put its pride into its empty pocket and came back as one man.

But the danger was not over yet, as Juggernaut well knew. For the moment the men were subdued by sheer physical exhaustion. The first pay-day would fill their bellies and put some red blood into their passions. And it was certain information, received on this head at the Pit offices, that sent Sir John Carr home to Belton Hall with knitted brow and tight-set mouth one wintry Saturday afternoon in early April, a fortnight after the men had resumed work.

He stepped out of the big motor and walked into the cheerful fire-lit hall. He stood and gazed reflectively upon the crackling logs as the butler removed his heavy coat. But the removal of the coat seemed to take no weight from his shoulders. He felt utterly lonely and unhappy. Was he growing old, he wondered. He was not accustomed to feel like this. He did not usually shrink from responsibility, or desire a shoulder to lean upon, but at this moment he suddenly felt the want of some one to consult. No; consult was not the word! He could have consulted Carthew. In fact he had just done so, for Carthew had returned from his holiday two days before. What he wanted was some one to confide in. With a sudden tightening of the heart he thought of a confidante who might have been at his side then, had things been different—a confidante who would have sat upon the arm of his chair and bidden him play the man and fear nothing. Well, doubtless he would play the man and fear nothing, and doubtless he would win again as he had done before. But—cui bono? What doth it profit a man——?

He wondered where she was. Yachting on the Mediterranean, or frivolling on the Riviera. Or perhaps she was back in London by this time, ordering her spring clothes and preparing for another butterfly season. At any rate she was not at Belton Hall. Whose fault was that?...

Had he been lacking in patience with her? Had he treated her too much like a refractory board-meeting?... A little fool? Doubtless; but then, so were most women. And she was very young, after all....

"Will you take anything before dinner, sir?" inquired a respectful voice in his ear. "Tea? Whisky-and——"

"No, thank you, Graves. Is Master Brian in the nursery?"

"Yes, sir."

"I will go up shortly and say good-night to him. Meanwhile I shall be in the study if Mr Carthew or any one calls for me. But I don't want to be disturbed at present."

A minute later he opened the door of the apartment, half library, half smoking-room, which he called his study. It was in darkness, but for the cheerful glow of the fire.

As Juggernaut closed the door behind him and felt for the electric-light switch, there came a rustling from the depths of a great oak settle which formed a right-angle with the projecting mantelpiece; and a slim straight figure stood suddenly upright, silhouetted against the ruddy glare.

"Daphne!"

"Yes—me!" replied an extremely small voice.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE CANDLE LIT.

There is no more disagreeable sensation in this world than that furnished by a sudden encounter with some one with whom we are on "awkward" terms. Most people know what it is to cross the street to avoid an old friend, or to dodge into a shop in order to escape the necessity of inflicting or receiving the cut direct. Very often the origin of the quarrel has been forgotten or ceased to be of real moment, but the awkwardness endures. Oftener still a reconciliation would be welcomed on both sides; but pride, pride, pride intervenes.

Now the best solvent of stubborn obstinacy is a sense of humour. As Juggernaut stood in the darkness, surveying the embarrassed little figure before him—in his eyes Daphne, five feet seven in her stockings, was always "little"—and feeling acutely conscious on his own part of an irresistible desire to shuffle with his feet, he suddenly and most providentially broke into one of his rare laughs—a laugh of quiet and unforced enjoyment.

Apparently this was not quite what Daphne expected.

"What is the matter?" she inquired. Her voice quavered pathetically, for she was highly wrought.

"I couldn't help thinking," said her husband, "of an episode in the history of two old friends of mine. They had been engaged for about three months, when they quarrelled—severely. They parted company for ever, and whenever he or she saw the other upon the horizon, he or she fled. However, after about six weeks of this sort of thing they were taken by surprise. One day the man saw the girl advancing straight upon him down the street, quite oblivious of his proximity. He dived into the nearest shop, which happened to be a baby-linen establishment—"

Daphne gave a sudden gurgle of laughter.

"—And when the girl walked in, two minutes later," concluded Juggernaut, "to match some silk, she found her late beloved diligently sampling Berlin wool. That did it! The sense of humour of that young couple came to their rescue, Daphne, and they walked out of the shop hand-in-hand, not caring a dump for anybody. To my knowledge they have never had a quarrel since. You see the reason why I laughed just now?"

Daphne sighed comfortably.

"Yes," she said. The tension of the situation was relaxed.

"I want to—to talk to you, Jack," she continued, considerably heartened.

"Certainly," replied Juggernaut, with a slight return of his board-room air. "I'll turn the light on."

"Please don't," said Daphne hastily. "I would rather talk in the dark. Will you sit down on the settle?"

Juggernaut obeyed silently. The firelight played upon his face, showing the clear-cut lines of his mouth and his tired eyes. Daphne stood erect before him, keeping her face in the shadow. She had removed her hat and furs, and her thick hair caught the light fantastically.

"Jack," she began, industriously scrutinising the vista of the room reflected by an ancient convex mirror hanging on the far wall, "I want to say something. I want to say that I am sorry. I have done you an injustice. I always thought you were a hard man, and I have discovered that you are not. In fact," she continued with a flicker of a smile, "I have found out that you are very much the other thing." She paused.

"May I ask for chapter and verse?" said Juggernaut.

"Yes!" The old Daphne flashed forth. "Here are you, fighting all these men with one hand, giving no quarter, and all that sort of thing—" Juggernaut stirred suddenly in his seat—"and feeding the women and children with the other! Aren't you, now?" She pointed an accusing finger.

"Since you tax me with it—yes," said her husband.

Daphne turned upon him impulsively, with the firelight full on her face.

"Jack," she said softly, "it was splendid of you!"

He looked up and saw that her eyes were glowing. She came a step nearer, and her head drooped prettily. "And I'm sorry if I have been unfair to you, Jack," she continued. "I—I thought you were just a feelingless sort of man, whose work was his world, and who cared for nothing but himself and what he had in view, and regarded women as merely useful things to keep house, and have babies, and so on. But now I know that I was wrong. There is more of you than that. Being me, I had to tell you."

She ended with a little catch in her voice. She had made her effort. She had humbled herself, and in so doing she had laid herself open to the cruellest of rebuffs. She waited tremulously. A hard word, a scornful smile, even silence now—and two lives would fall asunder for ever.

But the wheels of Juggernaut had never passed over a woman.

"Will you sit down?" said Sir John gently.

He made room for her, and she sank down beside him, leaning her head against the high back of the settle and gazing unwinkingly into the fire. She was conscious now that this man was overflowing with tenderness towards her, but she would not look him in the face yet.

"How did you find out about the rations to the women?" he enquired presently.

Daphne told him.

"But you mustn't blame Jim Carthew," she said in conclusion. "He simply had to tell me."

"Where did you see him?"

"Last week, in Algiers. In fact, he brought me home; but I made him promise not to tell you I was in London. He is a good sort!" she added irrelevantly.

"In what way?" asked her husband curiously.

Daphne turned and surveyed him.

"Would you be angry if I told you—jealous, I mean?"

"What right have I to be angry or jealous?" said Juggernaut simply. "In what way," he repeated, "has Carthew been showing that he is a good sort?"

"Well, in bringing me his troubles. That always makes a conquest of any woman, you know. And in letting me take my troubles to him. A woman always has to take a trouble to a man, Jack, when all is said and done—even if he is only the family solicitor!" she concluded hurriedly. She had suddenly skated on to thin ice, and she knew it. The man to whom she should have taken her troubles had not been there to receive them.

"So Jim Carthew has his troubles like the rest of us?" said Juggernaut.

"Yes, and I never suspected how he felt about them," said Daphne. "He is fearfully reserved about the things he really feels, although he babbles enough about the things he doesn't. So, when I was in trouble——"

"What was your trouble?"

"I was lonely," said the girl.

Juggernaut drew his breath sharply.

"I am glad you had some one to be kind to you," he said.

Then came a long pause—the sort of pause which either brings a discussion to an end or begets another, longer and more intimate. We all know them.

Finally Daphne braced herself.

"Jack," she said, "I want to say something more. I didn't mean to: I have said all I came here to say. But I must say this too—now or never. I—I—I was wrong to marry you, Jack. I didn't love you, but I thought it didn't matter. I felt how divine it would be to be able to help the boys and Dad. That was all I considered. Then, when I began to go about, and meet new people, and make comparisons, I—found myself criticising you! Me—you!"

"I wouldn't be too indignant about it if I were you," said her husband.

He reached out deliberately for her hand, and continued his contemplation of the fire.

"Go on," he said.

Daphne, foolishly uplifted, continued—

"I used to think you rough and hard and unsympathetic. I began to prefer the men who buzzed round and murmured things in my ear. And when people began to pity me as a neglected wife, I—I encouraged them. I let women say catty things about you, and I let men make love to me. That sort of thing has been going on ever since the time"—Daphne's grip of her husband's hand tightened—"when you and I decided—to go our own ways. I don't mind telling you now that it was a pill for me, Jack. My pride——"

"It was a brutal act on my part," blazed out Juggernaut with sudden passion.

"No it wasn't: it was what I deserved!" insisted Daphne, whose nature did not permit her to be repentant by halves. "Well, anyhow, I determined to flirt in real earnest now. So I began to carry on in an experimental fashion. But I can't say it was much fun. Finally I did fall in love with a man, in a sort of way—don't hurt my hand, dear; it was only in a sort of way—and I let him see it. Well, I got a facer over him. One night, under the moon, I tried to flirt with him; and he—well, Jack, he fairly put me in my place!"

"What did he do?"

"He made me feel ashamed of myself."

"What did he say?"

"Not much that we need talk of now, except one thing."

"What was that?"

"He told me to go back to you."

"Why?"

"Because he said"—Daphne's voice dropped low—"that you loved me."

There was a long silence, until a live coal subsided in the grate. Then Juggernaut said—

"It was Carthew, I suppose."

Daphne nodded.

"Jack," she said, "Jim Carthew is the best friend that you and I possess."

"I know it."

They were silent again, until irrelevant Daphne enquired suddenly—

"Jack, what made you do that unpractical thing? The tea and sugar, I mean. It was only prolonging the strike: even I can see that."

"It didn't prolong the strike to any particular extent," said Juggernaut with decision. "Not that I care," he added with unusual inconsequence, "if it did. It made things no easier for the men; and it is with the men that the decision lies in cases of this kind."

"But it was so unlike you," persisted Daphne.

Her husband turned and regarded her quizzically.

"Was it?" he said, smiling. "We all have our weaknesses," he added. "Mine are women and children. I think," he went on with great deliberation, "that there is only one woman in this wide world who has ever suffered ill at my hands."

"And she is——"

"My wife! Listen," he continued rapidly, "while I make confession. You have spoken your piece bravely, Daphne. Now hear me mine."

He rose in his turn, and stood before his wife.

"I never knew or cared very much about women," he said. "I do not remember my mother, and I had no sisters, which probably accounts for a good deal. Also, I was brought up by a man among men, and I learned to read men and handle men to the exclusion of all else. I was given to understand that women did not matter. I was trained to regard them as a sort of inferior and unreliable variety of the male sex. So I confined my dealings to men, and I found so much joy in handling and mastering men that my eyes became closed to the fact that life could offer me anything else."

"But didn't you miss female society? Most men can't get on without some," said experienced Daphne.

"You can't miss what you have never had, little girl. Perhaps if I had encountered female society early in life——"

"But didn't you sometimes instinctively long for a woman to come and take charge of you? Most men are so helpless and messy by themselves."

"Sometimes," admitted Juggernaut almost reluctantly, "I did. But I put the notion from me."

"Shall I tell you why?" said Daphne quietly.

"I suppose it was because I didn't want to yield to a weakness."

"It was nothing of the kind," said Daphne with immense decision. "It was because you were afraid!"

"Afraid?"

"Yes—afraid! You would have nothing to do with women, because you told yourself you despised them. We were a waste of time, you said—an encumbrance! The real reason was that you feared us. Yes—feared! Success was the breath of life to you. You had always had your own way wherever you went. You were the great Sir John Carr—the strong man—Juggernaut! You had never been beaten. Why? Because you had never had the pluck to try conclusions with a woman. Your excuse was that you were a woman-hater, when all the time you were a woman-lover. You have just admitted it, impostor! You were afraid that where every man had failed to turn you from your own hard selfish way of life, a woman might succeed. And so you ran away, and you have been running ever since. There, my strong man, there's the truth for you!"

For once in his life Sir John Carr, the terror of deputations, the scourge of unsound logicians, the respectfully avoided of hecklers, had no answer ready. The reason was obvious: no answer was possible. The victory lay with Daphne. She leaned back in the settle and looked fearlessly up into her husband's face. For the first time in her life she felt maternal towards this man—twenty-two years her senior—just as old Mrs Carfrae had predicted. She was utterly and absolutely happy, too, for she had just realised that she and her husband had come together at last. They were one flesh. The time for tactful diplomacy and mutual accommodation and making allowances was over-past. No need now to guard the flame from sudden gusts and cross-winds. The candle was safely lighted, and, please God, it should burn steadily to its socket. The Safety Match had accomplished its task after all.

Then she gave a happy little sigh, for her husband's great arm was around her shoulders.

"All my life, Daphne," said his deep voice, "I have thought that the sweetest thing in this world was victory. Now I have just received my first defeat—you routed me, hip and thigh—and I am happier than I have ever been. Why?"

"Think!" commanded a muffled voice in the neighbourhood of his waistcoat.

Juggernaut obeyed. Then he continued, and his grip round Daphne grew stronger—

"I think I see. I married you because I wanted some one to keep my house in order and bear me a son. (That point of view did not endure long, I may say, for I fell in love with you on our honeymoon, and I have loved you ever since; but it was my point of view when I asked you to marry me.) I thought then that it would be a fair bargain if I gave you money and position in return for these things. We could not help living contentedly together, I considered, under the terms of such a logical and business-like contract as that. Well, I did not know then, what I know now, that logic and business are utterly valueless as a foundation for any contract between a man and a woman. The only thing that is the slightest use for the purpose is the most illogical and unbusiness-like thing in the whole wide world. And"—his iron features relaxed into a smile of rare sweetness—"I believe, I believe, cara mia, that you and I have found that thing—together." His voice dropped lower. "Have we, Daphne—my wife?"

Daphne raised her head, and looked her man full in the face.

"We have found it, O my husband," she said gravely—"at last!"

The door flew open suddenly. There was a gleam of electric light. Graves, the imperturbable, inclined respectfully before them.

"You are wanted outside, sir," he said, "badly!"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

ATHANASIUS CONTRA MUNDUM.

A confused medley of men and women—not to mention the inevitable small boy element—was pouring up the road from Belton Pit in the direction of the Hall, which lay beyond the brow of the hill in a green hollow as yet unsullied by winding-wheels and waste-heaps. People who have made up their minds to do evil are usually in a hurry to get it over. Consequently our friends were advancing at a high rate of speed, keeping up their courage by giving forth unmelodious noises.

Juggernaut's prophecy had come true. The rebellion had been damped down by sheer starvation; and now that starvation was over-past, the rebellion was flaming out again with tenfold vigour. That fine unreasoning human instinct which under a certain degree of pressure bids logic and argument go hang, and impels us to go forth and break some one else's windows, held the reins that evening. As the night-shift assembled at the pit-head, what time the day-shift was being disgorged, a cageful at a time, from the depths below, a great and magnificent project suddenly hatched itself in the fertile brain of Mr Tom Winch, who had been haunting the neighbourhood on business connected with the propaganda of his own particular revolutionary organisation for the past six weeks. Now was his chance. Evil passions, hitherto dimmed by hunger and privation, were reviving. The men were ripe for any mischief. What they were asking for, reflected Mr Winch, was blood, or its equivalent, and a man to lead them to it.

Mr Winch was, to do him justice, a master of his own furtive trade. In five minutes his project was circulating through the throng. In fifteen the crowd had pledged itself to do something really big; and in half an hour most of the windows of the pit offices had been broken as a guarantee of good faith.

Having whetted its appetite on this hors-d'œuvre, the mob listened readily to Mr Winch's suggestion of a brisk walk to Belton Hall and a personal interview with its proprietor. The notion ran through the excited mass of humanity like fire through dry grass; and presently, as if from one spontaneous impulse, the advance on Belton Hall began. No one quite knew what he proposed to do when he got there, but the possibilities of the expedition were great. It was a picturesque procession, for every man carried a safety-lamp in one hand and a missile in the other. It was probably owing to the multiplicity of the twinkling points of light thus produced that no one observed the flickering halo of a solitary bicycle-lamp, as the machine which bore it slipped out from the side-door of the pit offices and silently stole away through the darkness, carrying a frightened messenger over the hill to Belton Hall.

It may here be noted that Mr Tom Winch, having despatched his avenging host upon its way, remained behind at headquarters—doubtless to superintend the subsequent operations with that degree of perspective which is so necessary to a good general. Mr Killick, an old acquaintance of ours, supported by his friend Mr Brash, led the procession.

"Supposin' the lodge gates is locked—what then?" enquired Mr Brash—ever a better critic than creator of an enterprise—as they trudged along the muddy road.

"We shall trample them down," replied Mr Killick, ever contemptuous of irritating detail.

But the lodge gates stood hospitably open. The lodge itself was shuttered and silent; and the procession, pausing momentarily to deliver a hilarious and irregular volley of small coal, proceeded on its way.

Up the long avenue they tramped. There were electric lamps at intervals, intended for the guidance of strange coachmen on dinner-party nights. These were all ablaze. Evidently Juggernaut was expecting friends.

Five minutes later our glorious company of apostles rounded the last turn in the avenue, and the broad Elizabethan façade of Belton Hall loomed up before them. Every window was alight.

A flagged and balustraded terrace ran along the whole frontage of the Hall. In the middle of the balustrade was a gap, where a broad flight of shallow stone steps led down to a velvety lawn three hundred years old. Most of the crowd knew that lawn and terrace well. The grounds at Belton were constantly and freely granted for miners' fêtes, political demonstrations, and the like. On these occasions a band was nearly always playing upon the terrace, and not infrequently post-prandial orations were outpoured from the rostrum formed by the stone steps upon the heads of a gorged and tolerant audience on the grass below.

To-night no band was playing; but at the head of the steps—motionless, upright, inflexible—stood a solitary figure. It was the master of the house, waiting to receive his guests—one against four hundred.

But to one who knew, the odds were not overwhelming. In fact, provided that the crowd possessed no resolute leader, the chances were slightly in favour of the figure on the steps. One man with his wits about him has two great advantages over a crowd. In the first place, he knows exactly what he is going to do, and, in the second, he knows exactly what the crowd is going to do. The crowd knows neither. It is impossible to foretell how a single individual will behave upon emergency: the human temperament varies too widely. But there is nothing in the world so normal or conventional as a crowd. Mankind in the lump is a mere puppet in the hands of the law of averages. Given, as noted above, a resolute leader, the conditions are changed. The leader imbues the crowd with a portion of his own spirit, and creates an instinct of unanimity. Then the odds are once more in favour of the crowd; for now it is a resolute will, all alone, pitted against a resolute will with force behind it.

Sir John Carr knew all this. He had studied men all his life; and as he stood silent and observant, surveying the surging multitude at his feet—it had flowed to the base of the steps now—he noted that there was no leader in particular. The crowd were acting under the influence of blind impulse, and, if properly handled, could be swayed about and sent home.

Presently the hubbub ceased, and the men stood gazing upward, fingering lumps of coal and waiting for some one to fire the first shot.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," observed Juggernaut. [The ladies, be it noted, constituted the front row of the assemblage, their cavaliers having modestly retired a few paces under their employer's passionless scrutiny.] "If you have come to serenade me, I shall have pleasure presently in sending you out some refreshment. If you have merely come to burn the house down, I strongly advise you to go home and think twice about it."

The recipients of this piece of advice were undoubtedly a little taken aback. Playful badinage was the last thing they had expected. They murmured uneasily one to another, debating suitable retorts. Presently a shrill female voice opened fire.

"Tyrant!"

"Money-grubber!" corroborated another voice.

"Who starves women and children?" shrieked a third.

"Yah! Booh!" roared the crowd, taking heart.

"Chuck some of his own coals at 'im!" was the frantic adjuration of a foolish virgin who had already expended all her ammunition against the shutters of the gate-lodge.

A lump of something black and crystalline sang past Juggernaut's head, and struck a richly glowing stained-glass window twenty feet behind him. There was a sharp crash and a silvery tinkle, followed by a little gasp from the crowd. The first shot had been fired. Juggernaut knew well that a broadside was imminent, and countered swiftly. In the startled silence which succeeded the destruction of the great window—it had lighted the staircase at Belton for generations—his voice rang out like a trumpet.

"Listen to me!" he cried. "You have a grievance. You have come up here to square accounts with me. You think you have right on your side: I think it is on mine. Both of us are spoiling for a fight. In our present frame of mind nothing else will satisfy us. Now here is a fair offer. Send up any two men you like out of that multitude down there, and I will take them on, both together or one after the other, as you please. I am rising forty-seven, but if I fail to drop either of your representatives over this balustrade, back where he came from, inside of five minutes, I promise to remit the dues on that odd hundredweight that you are making all this to do about. Is it a bargain, gentlemen?"

He had struck the right note. The low, angry murmuring suddenly ceased, and a great wave of Homeric laughter rolled over the crowd. The British collier has his faults, but within his limits he is a sportsman. He appreciates pluck.

"Good lad!" roared a voice out of the darkness. Then there fell another silence.

"I am waiting, gentlemen," said Juggernaut presently.

But he had to continue waiting. His audience, as previously noted, were sportsmen within limits. The limits, alas! in those soft days are too often the coursing of a half-blinded rabbit, or the backing of a horse in a race which will not be witnessed by the backer. It is always gratifying to be invited to participate in a sporting event, but there is a difference between a seat on the platform and a stance in the arena. Getting hurt gratuitously is slipping into the index expurgatorius of modern field sports.

Men began to look sheepishly at one another. One or two had started forward instinctively, but the impulse died away. A humourist was heard imploring his friends to hold him back. There was something unutterably grim about the towering figure up on the terrace. Democracy and the equality of mankind to the contrary, Jack usually recognises his master when it comes to a pinch. No Jack seemed to desire advancement on this occasion.

Juggernaut waited for another minute. He wanted the silence to sink in. He wanted the crowd to feel ridiculous. That object achieved, he proposed to turn his visitors to the right-about and send them home. He had been through this experience before, and felt comparatively sure of his ground.

Provided, that is, that one thing did not occur. There were women present.

Now women are exempt from the law of averages: the sex snaps its fingers at computations based upon laboriously compiled statistics. If the women—or more likely a woman—gave the men a lead, anything might happen. And just as Juggernaut uplifted his voice to pronounce a valediction, the disaster befel.

"Now go home," he began. "You are not yourselves to-night. Go home, and think things over. Consult the older men: I see none of them here. If you are of the same mind to-morrow, I promise to——"

"Call yourselves men? Cowards! cowards! cowards! One of us is worth the lot of you!"

A woman, with a shawl over her head and a child in her arms, had mounted half-way up the steps, and was addressing the mob below. Sir John recognised her as Mrs Brash, a quiet little person as a rule.

"Come up, chaps!" she shrieked. "Are you going to let him stamp on us all? Look at his fine house, and his electrics, and his marble steps and all!" [They were plain freestone, but let that pass.] "Where did he get 'em all? From us—us that he has starved and clemmed this last two months! Are you afraid of him—the lot of you? Great hulking cowards! I see you, Brash, hiding there! Isn't there one man here?"

"Yes—by God there is!"

With a bound, Killick, the brooding visionary, the Utopian Socialist, was at the top of the steps, brandishing a pit-prop and haranguing his comrades. There was no stopping him. Mrs Brash had fired the train and Killick was the explosion. His words gushed out—hot, passionate, delirious. The man's sense of proportion, always unstable, was gone entirely. He burned with the conviction of his own wrongs and those of his fellows. Nobilis ira gave him eloquence. He laid violent hands upon wealth and power and greed and tyranny, and flung them one by one down the steps on to the heads of his hearers. Most of what he said was entirely irrelevant; a great deal more was entirely untrue; but it served. For the moment Sir John Carr stood for all the injustice and cruelty that strength has ever inflicted upon weakness. Every word told. The mob was aflame at last. They hung upon Killick's fiery sentences, surging ever more closely round the steps. The next wave, Juggernaut saw, would bring them in a flood upon the terrace; and then—what? He thought coolly and rapidly. There was Daphne to consider—also little Brian. Daphne, he knew, was close by, standing with beating heart behind the curtains of the library window. He had forbidden her to come farther. Perhaps, though, she had been sensible, and taken the opportunity of this delay to slip away. Of course, of course.

There was a movement beside him, and he realised that his education in femininity still left something to be desired. A hand slid into his, and Daphne's voice whispered in his ear—

"Jack, I want to speak to them."

Her husband turned and smiled upon her curiously.

"What are you going to say?" he asked.

"I am going to tell them about—about the tea and sugar. It's the only thing to do," said Daphne eagerly.

"I would rather be knocked on the head by a pit-prop!" said Juggernaut. And he meant it. Some of us are terribly afraid of being exposed as sentimentalists.

Meanwhile the crowd had caught sight of Daphne. The men fell silent, as men are fain to do when a slim goddess, arrayed in black velvet, appears to them, silhouetted against a richly glowing window. But there was a vindictive shriek from the women.

"Get back at once, dear," said Juggernaut. "You are in great danger. Telephone to the police, and tell Graves to get the fire-hose out. It may be useful in two ways. I promise to come in if things get worse. Hallo! who is that?"

A burly man in a bowler hat, panting with the unwonted exertion of a two-mile run, was approaching him along the terrace. He had come up the drive unnoticed, and having skirted the edge of the crowd had gained access to the terrace from another flight of steps at the end. It was Mr Walker, the mine manager.

"I tried to get you on the telephone," he shouted in Juggernaut's ear; "but they have cut the wire."

"What is it?" asked Juggernaut.

Walker told him.

There was just time to act. The mob were pouring up the steps in response to Killick's final invitation. Juggernaut strode forward.

"Stop!" he cried in a voice of thunder. "Stop, and listen to what Mr Walker has to tell you!"

His great voice carried, and there was a moment's lull. Walker seized his opportunity.

"There has been an accident at the pit," he bellowed. "Some of your lads went down after you had left, to see what damage they could do to the plant. Some of the older men went down to stop them. Something happened. The roofs of the main road and intake have fallen in, and Number Three Working is cut off—with eight men in it!"

There was a stricken silence, and the wave rolled back from the steps. Presently a hoarse voice cried—

"Who are they?"

Mr Walker recited six names. Four of these belonged to young bloods who had been foremost in the riot at the pit-head. There were agonised cries from women in the crowd. All four men were married. The fifth name, that of Mr Adam Wilkie, who was a bachelor and a misogynist, passed without comment. The sixth was that of a pit-boy named Hopper.

Mr Walker paused.

"You said eight!" cried another woman's voice in an agony of suspense. "The other two—for the love of God!"

"Amos Entwistle," replied Mr Walker grimly—"and Mr Carthew."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

LABORARE EST ORARE.

Six men sat upon six heaps of small coal in a long rectangular cavern five feet high and six feet broad. The roof was supported by props placed at distances specified by the Board of Trade. One side of the cavern was pierced at regular intervals by narrow openings which were in reality passages; the other was a blank wall of gleaming coal.

This was the "face"—that point in the seam of coal which marked the limits of progress of the ever-advancing line of picks and shovels.

The men were well over two hundred fathoms—roughly a quarter of a mile—below the surface of the earth, and they had been prisoners in Number Three Working ever since an explosion of fire-damp and coal-dust had cut them off from communication with the rest of Belton Pit six hours before.

The prisoners were Jim Carthew, Amos Entwistle, and Adam Wilkie, together with a hewer, a drawer, and a pit-boy, named Atkinson, Denton, and Hopper respectively. There had been two others, but they lay dead and buried beneath a tombstone twelve hundred feet high.

What had happened was this.

About four o'clock on that disastrous afternoon, Amos Entwistle was sitting despondently in his own kitchen. He was the oldest and most influential overman in Belton Pit, but his counsels of moderation had been swept aside by the floods of Mr Winch's oratory; and like the practical creature that he was he had returned home, to await the issue of the insurrection and establish an alibi in the event of police-court proceedings.

To him entered Mr Adam Wilkie, with the news that some of the more ardent iconoclasts of the day-shift had remained below in the pit, in order to break down the roofs of some of the galleries leading to the workings—an amiable and short-sighted enterprise which, though pleasantly irritating to their employer, must inevitably throw its promoters and most of their friends out of work for an indefinite period.

Here at least was an opportunity to act. Entwistle hastily repaired to the pit-offices, where he knew that Mr Carthew had been spending the afternoon; and the three, united for the moment by the bond of common-sense, if nothing else, dropped down the shaft with all speed. Fortunately the man in charge of the winding-engine was still at his post, and of an amenable disposition.

Arrived at the pit bottom, they hurried along the main road. The atmosphere was foul and close, for the ventilating machinery had ceased to work. There was a high percentage of fire-damp, too, as constant little explosions in their Davy lamps informed them.

Presently they overtook the enemy, who had done a good deal of mischief already; for they had set to work in the long tunnel known as the intake, down which fresh air was accustomed to flow to the distant workings; and at every blow of their picks, a pit-prop fell from its position and an overhead beam followed, bringing down with it a mingled shower of stone and rubbish.

There was no time to be lost, for the whole roof might fall at any moment. It was three against five; but authority is a great asset and conscience a great liability. By adopting a "hustling" policy of the most thorough description, Carthew, Entwistle, and Wilkie hounded their slightly demoralised opponents along the intake towards the face, intending to round up the gang in one of the passages leading back to the main road, and, having pursued the policy of peaceful dissuasion to its utmost limits, conduct their converts back to the shaft.

The tide of battle rolled out of the intake into the cavern formed by the face and its approaches. Master Hopper was the first to arrive, the toe of Mr Entwistle's boot making a good second.

"Now, you men," said Carthew, addressing the sullen, panting figures which crouched before him—the roof here was barely five feet above the floor—"we have had enough of this. Get out into the main road and back to the shaft. You are coming up topside of this pit with us—that's flat!"

But his opponents were greater strategists than he supposed.

"Keep them there, chaps!" cried a voice already far down one of the passages.

"Catch that man!" cried Carthew. "Let me go!"

Shaking off Atkinson, who in obedience to orders had made a half-hearted grab at him, he darted down the nearest passage. It led to the main road, but across the mouth hung a wet brattice-cloth. Delayed a moment, he hurried on towards the junction with the main road, just in time to descry two twinkling Davy lamps disappearing round the distant corner. They belonged to Davies and Renwick, the ringleaders of the gang. What their object might be he could not for the moment divine, but he could hear their voices re-echoing down the silent tunnel. Evidently they were making for the main road, perhaps to raid the engine-room or call up reserves. He must keep them in sight. Laboriously he hastened along the rough and narrow track.

Suddenly, far ahead in the darkness, he heard a crash, followed by a frightened shriek. Next moment there was a roar, which almost broke the drums of his ears, and the whole pit seemed to plunge and stagger. His lamp went out, and he lay upon the floor in the darkness—darkness that could be felt—waiting for the roof to fall in.

Renwick and Davies, it was discovered long afterwards, had reached the main road, running rapidly. Here one of them must have tripped over the slack-lying wire cable which drew the little tubs of coal up the incline from the lyes to the foot of the shaft. Two seconds later a tiny puddle of flaming oil from a broken lamp (which for once in a way had not been extinguished by its fall) had supplied the necessary ignition to the accumulated fire-damp and coal-dust of the unventilated pit. There was one tremendous explosion. Down came the roof of the main road for a distance of over half a mile, burying the authors of the catastrophe, Samson-like, in their own handiwork.

The survivors were sitting in the cul-de-sac formed by the face of the coal and its approaches, three-quarters of a mile from the shaft. No one had been injured by the explosion, though Carthew, being nearest, had lain half-stunned for a few minutes. Possibly the brattice-cloths hung at intervals across the ways to direct the air-currents had been instrumental in blanketing its force.

The party had just returned from an investigation of the possibilities of escape.

"Will you report, Mr Entwistle?" said Carthew, who found that the surviving mutineers appeared to regard him as the supreme head of the present enterprise and Entwistle as his chief adviser.

Amos Entwistle complied.

There were two ways, he explained in his broad north-country dialect, by which Number Three could be reached from the shaft. One was the intake, along which fresh air was conducted to the workings, and the other was the main road, which could be reached through any of the passages leading away from the face. The explosion in the main road had brought down the roof for a distance which might be almost anything. The intake was blocked too. It was some way from the scene of the explosion, but the props were gone, and the roof had come down from end to end, for all he knew.

"Is there no other way out?" said Carthew.

"None, sir."

Carthew indicated the row of openings beside them.

"Don't any of these lead anywhere?"

"They all lead to the main road, except that one at the end, which leads to the intake. We have plenty of room to move about, and plenty of air; but we are shut in, and that's a fact, sir."

"Is that your opinion too, Mr Wilkie?"

"We canna get gettin' oot o' this, sir," replied the oracle with complacent finality.

There was a deathlike silence. Then Master Hopper began to cry softly. He was going to die, he reflected between his sobs, and he was very young to do so. It was hard luck his being there at all. He had only joined the riot from youthful exuberance and a desire to be "in the hearse," as an old Scottish lady once bitterly observed of a too pushful mourner at her husband's funeral. He entertained no personal animosity against the owner of the pit: in fact he had never set eyes on him. His desire had merely been to see the fun. Well, he was seeing it. He wept afresh.

Atkinson and Denton sat and gazed helplessly at Carthew. The part they had played in sealing up six souls in the bowels of the earth had faded from their minds: to be just, it had faded from the minds of their companions as well. The past lay buried with Renwick and Davies. The future occupied their entire attention.

There was another danger to be considered—the suffocating after-damp of the explosion. Carthew inquired about this. Entwistle considered that the risk was comparatively slight.

"The cloths hung across the approaches to the main road should keep it away," he said. "It's a heavy gas, and don't move about much, like. We shall be able to tell by the lamps, anyway."

"Then what had we better do?" said Carthew briskly. "Dig?"

One of the men—Atkinson—lifted his head from his hands.

"Ah were saaved by t' Salvationists once," he said hoarsely. "Ah could put up a prayer."

"I think we will try the effect of a little spade-work first," said Carthew. "Laborare est orare, just now!" he added to himself.

A few hours later they re-assembled. They had tapped, sounded, hewed, and shovelled at every potential avenue of escape, but to no purpose. The intake and main road appeared to be blocked from end to end. Six men were mewed up with no food, a very little water, twenty-four hours' light, and a limited quantity of oxygen; and they had no means of knowing how near or how far away help might be.

All they were certain of was that on the other side of the barrier which shut them in men were working furiously to reach them in time, and that up above women were praying to God that He would deliver them.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

BLACK SUNDAY.

The search party had concluded its investigations, and stood at the foot of the shaft, which fortunately had not been injured by the distant explosion, waiting for the cage.

A pit-bottom is an unexpectedly spacious place, more resembling the cellars of a ducal mansion, or a city station in the days of the old under-ground, than a burrow in the hidden places of the earth. Whitewashed brick archways open up long vistas, illuminated by electric lamps. Through an adjacent doorway streams the cheerful glow of the engine-room, from which the haulage of the trucks is controlled. Only in the "sump," below the level of the flooring at the foot of the shaft, the water gleams black and dismally.

"Is there any other road to explore, Mr Walker?" asked a huge man in blue overalls, with a patent breathing apparatus strapped upon his back.

"No, Sir John. All we can do at present is to get the ventilating gear going again, and then send down a double shift to get to work on the main road, in the hope of finding some one alive at the end of it. Meanwhile we will go up and look at the pit-plan."

"How long do you think it will take to get through? You know more of the geography of this pit than I do."

"It depends on how far the roof is down. It will be slow work, for we must re-prop as we go. Twenty yards an hour is about the best we can expect to do, working top-notch all the time. And if the road is blocked from end to end, as well it may be, it will be a question of days, Sir John."

"And in Number Three they have neither food nor drink?"

"Neither, to our knowledge. Probably they have a little water, though. We must get at them double quick. Here is the cage coming down."

The cage roared upwards between the wooden guides, black with long use and glistening with oil and water; and presently the party were back in the great shed which covered the pit-head, pushing their way through anxious inquirers to the office buildings.

Leaving the other members of the search party—an overman and two hewers—to report progress, Sir John and his manager shut themselves into the inner office. Here Walker unrolled the pit-plan, which, with its blocks and junctions and crossings, looked very like an ordinary street map.

"Here we are," he said. "We have been able to explore the whole pit except this part here"—he dug the point of his pencil into a distant corner—"and the reason is that the means of access to that particular level are blocked. Here is where the block begins." The pencil swiftly shaded in a section. "There is the intake, all blown to smithereens; that and the road to Number Three. But if there are men alive in the pit, Number Three is where we shall find them."

"Do you believe that they are alive?" asked Juggernaut.

"I do. It seems incredible that the whole roof should have come down. We must get the ventilating plant in order and dig them out; that's the only way. We should be able to start work immediately."

"Right!" said Juggernaut, bracing himself at the blessed thought of action once more. "I'll call for volunteers."

A minute later, appearing at a brilliantly lit window, he addressed the silent throng below him. To most of them this was the second speech that they had received from him in twelve hours.

"We have been down the pit," he said. "There has been a biggish explosion, and Number Three is cut off by a heavy fall. The air below will be breathable in less than an hour, and we are going to set to work right away, and clear, and clear, and clear until we find out whether there is any one left alive there. Now,"—his voice rang out in sudden and irresistible appeal—"we want men, and plenty of them. Short shifts and high pressure! Those poor fellows have very little water, no food, and a doubtful air supply. I ask for volunteers. Who will come down? Step forward—now!"

A gentle ripple passed over the sea of upturned faces. Then it died away. The distance between the speaker and his entire audience had diminished by one pace.

"Thank you!" said Juggernaut simply. "I knew I had only to ask. Mr Walker, will you call the overmen together and get going as soon as possible?"

A few hours earlier the men of Belton had failed in an enterprise for lack of a leader. Now they had found one.

Sir John Carr drove the first shovel into the mass which blocked the main road, and for the space of thirty minutes he set a standard of pace in the work of rescue which younger and more supple successors found it hard to maintain.

Shift followed shift.

Sunday morning dawned up above, and the sun swung into a cloudless April sky, but still the work below went on—grim, untiring, unprofitable work. Hope deferred succeeded to hope deferred.

Twenty-four hours of blind energy advanced the rescuers three or four hundred yards, but there seemed to be no end to the fall. Progress was growing slower too, for the excavated material had to be carried back farther every time. Once during the second night word was sent up the shaft that two men had been hurt through a fresh fall in the roof, over-eagerness being the cause. Still the work went on. And so Black Sunday drew to a close, to be succeeded by a Monday of a very similar hue.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

VEILLESSE SAIT.

Lady Carr was at the pit-head early on Monday morning. She had arrived in the Belton motor, just in time to provide for the conveyance of the two injured men to the county hospital, eleven miles away. She herself passed quietly in and out amid the anxious groups of men and women. She said little: it was not a time for words; but it was noted that she lingered for more than a few minutes in the company of Master Hopper's mother, and that her grave, slow smile appeared to hearten that broken widow mightily.

Presently she encountered her husband, whom she had not seen for two nights and a day.

"You here?" he said.

"Yes. I have sent those two poor men away to Kilchester in the car, and I am waiting for it to come back." Then a note of maternal severity intervened. "Have you been to bed at all since I last saw you?"

"Not much," admitted Juggernaut. "But I have a vague recollection of lying down somewhere for a few hours last night. It may have been on the office sofa or it may have been in the sump. What I am more certain of is that I have not washed for days. I feel like Othello. But what has brought you down to the pit?"

"I thought you would like to know," said Daphne, "that this affair is in the morning papers."

Othello looked, if possible, blacker than before.

"Have they got the names?"

"Yes, Jim Carthew's too. And what do you think the result has been, Jack? I have had a wire from—from—" for a moment Daphne's concern for the tragedy around her was swallowed up in the joy of the match-making sex over one sinner that repenteth—"whom do you think?"

"I don't know."

Daphne told him. "It was the first thing she heard when she landed in England. She is frantic about him, and is coming down here to-day. She has offered to sleep anywhere, do anything, if only she may come. Jack, isn't it too heavenly?" Daphne positively crowed.

Juggernaut's teeth flashed across his grimy countenance in a sympathetic smile.

"You women!" he said softly. "We must fish him out for her after this, Daphne. Well, Mrs Entwistle?"

A middle-aged woman with hungry eyes was at his elbow. She was Amos Entwistle's wife.

"Would you come and speak to old Mr Entwistle, sir?" she said—"my man's father. He is too rheumatic to move about easy, but he seems to have something on his mind about another way of getting at them."

Sir John Carr turned and followed her promptly.

"Shall I come too, dear?" said Daphne.

"Better not. Go and send Walker to me if you can find him."

Mrs Entwistle conducted Juggernaut to a sunny nook, sheltered from the keen breeze, against the brickwork of the power-house. Here sat Entwistle senior, stone-deaf, almost blind, but with his eighty-year-old wits still bright and birdlike.

He was no respecter of titles or employers, this old gentleman, and in high-pitched, senile tones he criticised the arrangements for rescue. The excavatory operations were a mistake. Time was being wasted. The poor lads inside had nobbut a little water to drink and nowt to eat. The air would be getting foul, too.

"You must get there quick, Sir John," he said, rising painfully from his seat. "See now."

He began to hobble laboriously away from the vicinity of the pit-head towards the rather grimy fields which lay to the north of the colliery. By this time Walker had arrived, bringing with him a burly, bearded pit-inspector, sent down by the Board of Trade.

Twenty minutes' laborious walking ended in a halt in the middle of a bleak pasture-field, from which a few unconcerned sheep were extracting some exceedingly dubious-looking nourishment. Mr Entwistle called a halt.

"Been thinking things over," said he, breathing stertorously. "Known this country-side, above and below, nigh seventy year. The lads, they go buzzing round the pit-head, but the old man"—as a matter of fact he said "t'owd mon," but it will be simpler to paraphrase his utterance—"sits at home and thinks things over. They has to come to him in the end!"

All this was highly irrelevant and proportionately exasperating; but old age has its privileges. Doubtless Agamemnon, Menelaus, and other eager stalwarts longed with all their hearts to tear Nestor limb from limb, what time that venerable bore delivered himself of fifty lines of autobiographical hexameters as a preliminary to coming to the point; yet they never did. Presently Mr Entwistle concluded his exordium and tapped upon the ground with his staff.

"We are standing," he announced, "right over the road to Number Three. Two hundred fathom down," he added, in case they should have overlooked this point.

This, at anyrate, was a statement of fact. Walker produced and consulted the pit-plan. "You are about right," he said. "Well?"

"How far along this road is the face?" inquired the old gentleman. "It's a tidy number of years since I——"

Walker told him, with the result that the excursion was resumed. Presently Mr Entwistle came to a halt again.

"We're over Number Three now," he said.

Walker again confirmed him, with the aid of a compass-bearing and the pit-plan.

"Well?" he said.

The old man pointed with his stick to some dismantled and abandoned pit buildings farther down the valley, a full mile away.

"The old Shawcliffe Pit," he croaked. "Worked out this forty year. But I knowed it well when I were a lad."

Juggernaut, suddenly seeing light, caught the old man by the arm.

"You mean," said he rapidly, "that the Shawcliffe workings run up this way——"

"No, no," said Walker, interrupting. "You are wrong, Mr Entwistle. The Shawcliffe workings all run down the other way, to the north."

"Nay," persisted the old gentleman—"not all. They thowt there were a seam this way, and they drove one road out here, if so be they might pick it up. They had got signs of it, boring. But it were a faulty seam. It weren't until Belton Pit were opened, thirty years later, that they struck it fair."

"And that road runs out this way, from Shawcliffe shaft?" asked the Inspector.

"Ay, and it must come very nigh to the Belton Workings now—nigh to Number Three. I reckon——"

"He is right!" said Walker excitedly. "It's a chance! I have heard of this road, now I think of it." He turned to Entwistle again. "How far out do you think it runs? Quick, man—tell us!"

For answer the veteran, much inflated, stumped off again in a northerly direction, with all the assurance of a water-diviner in full cry. After fifty yards or so he stopped.

"I should say it ended about here," he said. "You can trust the old man's memory. The youngsters——"

Another lengthy deliverance was plainly threatened, but this time our Nestor observed, not without justifiable chagrin, that the majority of his audience had disappeared. The symposium was suddenly reduced to himself and his daughter-in-law.

Testily curtailing his peroration, to the exclusion of severable valuable aphorisms upon the advantages of senile decay over youthful immaturity, the old gentleman resignedly took the arm of Mrs Amos, and permitted himself to be conducted back to his fireside.

But he had served his turn for all that.

The other three were hurrying back to Belton Pit talking eagerly, Juggernaut leading by half a pace.

"It's madness, of course," said Walker cheerfully. "This pit has been closed for forty years. The props will be down——"

"The air will be foul," said the Inspector thoughtfully.

"Or explosive," added Walker.

"And there will probably be water," continued both together.

"Is the shaft still open?" asked Juggernaut brusquely.

"I believe so," said Walker.

"I suppose it would be possible to rig a derrick and tackle over it?"

"Yes."

They strode on a dozen paces.

"I am going down," said Juggernaut.

"I am going with you," said Walker.

"And I," said the Inspector, "am coming too."

They broke into a trot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

HOLD THE FORT!

The safety-lamps had burned themselves out hours ago, and the imprisoned party sat on in the dark. There was nothing else to do. Food they had none: their water was exhausted. They slept fitfully, but in the black darkness sleep seemed little removed from death, and time from eternity.

Jim Carthew lay with his head upon a friendly lump of coal, pondering with his accustomed detachment upon the sundry and manifold changes of this world. He thought of Death. Plainly he and his companions were about to solve the mystery of what lay hidden round that corner which our omniscience is pleased to consider the end of all things. What would they find there? Another life—a vista more glorious and sublime than man in his present state could conceive? Or just another long lane—just another highway of labour and love, of service and reward? Or—a cul-de-sac—an abyss—a jumping-off place? He wondered. Not the last alternative, he thought: more likely one of the other two. Anyhow, he would know soon, and it would be interesting. His one regret was that he would not be able to come back, even for five minutes, to tell his friends about it.

Friends!...

This brought a new train of reflection. He thought of Jack Carr and Jack Carr's wife. Would the latter keep her promise, and come back to her husband? He wondered. She should be in Belton this week, all being well—that is, if this was the week he thought it was. But time seemed rather a jumbled affair at present. Besides, he was so infernally hungry that he could not reason things out. Never mind!...

He thought of Nina Tallentyre. That difficulty had solved itself, anyhow. No need for further hopings or strivings: that was a relief! When their rupture occurred he had prayed to be excused from living further. He had even petitioned that the earth might open and swallow him up for ever. Well, the earth had done so, so he ought to be satisfied. He was gone down into silence, and Nina was rid of him—well rid of him! He was well rid of her, too. She had led him a dog's life the last few months. A dog's life. He repeated the fact to himself pertinaciously, but without any great feeling either of conviction or resentment.

He felt strangely contented and cheerful. His mind dwelt with persistence on the bright side of things. He thought of the day when she and he had first met, and Nina, in her superb, imperious manner, had desired him to take her out of "this rabble," and come and amuse her in a corner. He remembered subsequent meetings; various gracious acts of condescension on Nina's part; and finally one special evening on board a yacht in regatta-time, when they had sat together in a corner of the upper deck in the lee of the chart-house, with a perfectly preposterous moon egging them on, and the faint strains of Caressante pulsing across the silent water from the Commodore's yacht hard by; and Nina had nearly—almost—all-but—and then actually—capitulated.

She had gone back on her word three weeks later, it was true; but he drew consolation even now from the memory of something which had slipped through her long lashes and rolled down her cheek even as she dismissed him, a memory which had carried through many a black hour.

It was over episodes like this that his mind lingered. Other and less satisfactory items declined to come up for review. Perhaps, he reflected, dying men, provided they had lived clean and run straight, were always accorded this privilege. Only the credit side of the ledger accompanied them on their journey into the unknown. It was a comforting thought.

...He wondered what she would think when she heard about it. In a blue envelope at the bottom of his private strong-box they would find his will, a primitive document composed in secrecy, and endorsed: "To be opened when I have gone out for good." In this he had bequeathed all he possessed to "my friend Miss Nina Tallentyre," be she maid, wife, or widow at the moment. Carthew was not a man who loved by halves. All that he had was hers, whether she needed it or not. Of course she must not be made conspicuous in the matter; he had seen to that. The bequest was to be quite quiet and unostentatious. No probate, or notices in the papers, or rot of that kind. In the blue envelope was enclosed a private letter to his lawyers, dwelling on the importance of this point. They were decent old buffers, that firm, and would understand. They would square up any death-duties and other legal fakements that were necessary, and then pass on the balance to little Nina, to buy herself pretty things with. But no publicity! No embarrassment!

...He fell asleep, and dreamed, from the natural perversity of things, of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

When he awoke, low voices were conversing near him. Farther away he could hear the regular breathing of Master Hopper, who, with youth's ready amenability to Nature's own anodynes, was slumbering peacefully.

"I can weel understand, Mr Entwistle," observed Mr Wilkie in measured tones, "that no decent body would like to be seen entering yin o' they Episcopalian Kirks."

Amos Entwistle's heavy voice agreed. He commented with heat upon indulgence in vain repetitions and other heathen practices favoured by the Anglican community; and related with grim relish an anecdote of how his own daughter, lured from the Wesleyan fold by the external fascinations of the new curate, had once privily attended morning service at the parish church—to return, shocked to the foundations of her being, with horrific tales of candles burning on the altar in broad daylight and the Lord's Prayer repeated four times in the course of a single service.

"But what I couldna thole," continued Mr Wilkie, who had been characteristically pursuing his own line of thought in the meantime, "would be no tae belong tae the kirk of the land. A Chapel body! I could never endure the disgrace of it."

Entwistle demurred vigorously. It was no disgrace to be Chapel folks. Sturdy Independents were proud to be able to dispense with State-aided, spoon-fed religion. Disgrace, indeed! Were not Mr Wilkie's qualms on the subject of Dissent due rather to a hankering after the flesh-pots—the loaves and fishes—the——

"Well, perhaps no exactly a disgrace," continued Mr Wilkie, disregarding the latter innuendo, "but a kin' o' stigma, like. Man, it's an awful thing tae walk doon the street and meet the minister o' the pairish, and him pass by and tak' no more notice of ye than if ye were a Plymouth Brother or an Original Secessionist. I mind yince when I was in a Tynside pit, I sat under Mr Maconochie—him that gave up a grand kirk in Paisley tae tak a call tae oor wee bit Presbyterian contraption, Jarrow way. Now, although Mr Maconochie's kirk was my kirk and him oor minister, I used tae feel far more uplifted if I got a good-day frae the minister o' the English Kirk—Golightly, or some sic' name—an Episcopalian! I canna imagine why, but there it was. I doot it was just orthodoxy. He was the minister o' the kirk o' the land, and Mr Maconochie, being, for him, on the wrong side of the Border, was not. Gin I had met yon felly Golightly trapesing doon the High Street o' Jedburgh, things would hae been gey different; for then——"

The point at issue, Entwistle's deep patient voice asseverated, was this. Should a man who was an Independent allow himself or his bairns to have aught to do with Church folk on any pretence whatever?

He was answered in the darkness by a third voice. Denton, the hewer—Atkinson, the retired Salvationist, shovelled and wheeled away in a tub what Denton hewed—had awoken from an uneasy sleep, and was listening to the conversation. Of all that little band, probably he was the least prepared to die. He was a drunkard, a blasphemer, and an evil liver. But like the rest of us, he had his redeeming features. He had inspired and kept alive for a period of ten years the love of his wife—a feat which many an ex-sidesman, buried beneath a mountain of expensive masonry adorned by an epitaph beginning, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" has signally failed to accomplish. He sat up now.

"Ah niver 'ad nowt to do wi' churches or chapels," he began defiantly. "But ah knaws this. When my Maggie were lyin' badly four years agone, and us thought she was goin' to die, she asked me to go and fetch her pastor—dash;that's what she called him. Ah ran along to his house and begged him to come. He said"—the man's voice grew thick, and one could almost see his sombre eyes glow in the gross darkness—"he said he were busy! There was a swarry that neet that 'twas his duty to attend, and next day he was goin' off to a political meeting to protest against t' Education Bill, or summat. He said, too, that he had enough to do ministerin' to the wants o' them that deserved ministerin' to, wi'out comin' to the house o' the likes o' me. When had he last seen me in t' chapel, he would like to knaw? Yes, that was what he wanted to knaw! He wanted to stand and ask me questions like that when my Maggie——!... Ah cursed him, and his chapel, and his fat-bellied deacons till Ah were out o' puff with it: then Ah went off down the street half-crazed. There Ah runs straight into a young feller wi' a soft black hat and long legs. He was standing outside t' door of his lodgings, smoking a pipe in the dark. He was t' curate at t' parish church, and when he saw I wasn't in liquor, he asked me what was my trouble. I telled him. 'Is that all?' says he. 'Will I do? I've just come off my day's work, and I ain't got nothing to do but amuse myself now.' It were nigh ten o'clock. Well, he comes with me, and he sat by my Maggie all the neet through, and sent me with a note to a doctor that were a friend of his, and only went away himsel' at seven o'clock next morning, because he had to get shaved and take early service or summat. That's all your chapel folk ever done for me, Amos Entwistle."

"That was a special case, and proves no rules. Besides," said Entwistle soberly, "this is no time for religious differences. We are in God's hands now, and I doubt we shall all be in a place soon where there is neither Church nor Chapel."

"Would it no be best for us all tae keep silence for a matter o' ten minutes," suggested Wilkie, "and pit up a bit prayer each of his ain, we bein' no all of the same way of thinkin' in these matters? That gate, wi' so many prayers o' different denominations goin' up, yin at least should get gettin' through the roof of the pit. Are ye agreed, chaps?"

"Ay, ay!" said Entwistle.

The others all murmured assent, save Master Hopper, who shrieked out in sudden fear. The proximity of death had become instantly and dreadfully apparent to him on Mr Wilkie's suggestion. Carthew reached out and pulled him to his side.

"Come over here, by me," he said.

Master Hopper, greatly soothed, crept close, and settled down contentedly enough with an arm round Carthew's shoulders. Presently Carthew heard him repeating The Lord's Prayer to himself in a low and respectful whisper.

The silence lasted longer than ten minutes. For one thing, the supplicants were exhausted in body, soul, and spirit, and their orisons came slowly. For another, there was no need to hurry. For nearly an hour no one spoke.

At length some one sat up in the darkness, and the voice of Atkinson inquired—

"Mr Carthew, sir, I think a song of praise would hearten us all."

"I believe it would," said Carthew. He was not enamoured of the corybantic hymnology of the Salvation Army, but the horror of black darkness was beginning to eat into his soul, and he knew that the others were probably in a worse plight. "What shall we sing?"

"At the meeting where I were saved," said Atkinson deferentially, "we concluded worship by singing a hymn I have never forgotten since: Hold the Fort!"

"That sounds a good one," said Carthew, struggling with an unreasonable sensation of being in the chair at a smoking-concert. "Does any one else here know Hold the Fort!?"

Yes, Entwistle knew it. Master Hopper had heard it. Mr Wilkie had not. He did not hold with hymns: even paraphrases were not, in his opinion, altogether free from the taint of Popery. If it had been one of the Psalms of David, now! Still, he would join. Denton knew no hymns, but was willing to be instructed in this one.

Atkinson, trembling with gratification, slowly rehearsed the words, the others repeating them after him.

"We will sing it now," he said.

He raised the tune in a clear tenor. Most north-countrymen are musicians by instinct. In a few moments this grim prison was flooded by a wave of sonorous melody. The simple, vulgar, taking tune swelled up; the brave homely words rang out, putting new heart into every one. Each and all joyfully realised that there are worse ways of going to one's death than singing a battle-song composed by Moody and Sankey. With drawn white faces upturned to the heaven they could not see they sang on, flinging glorious defiance into the very teeth of Death—gentleman and pitman, Church and Chapel, zealot and infidel.

"Last verse again!" commanded Atkinson.

"Wait a moment!" cried Entwistle, starting up.

But no one heard him. The chorus was rolling out once more—

"Hold the Fort, for I am coming——"

Tap, tap, tap! Scrape, scrape, scrape! Hammer, hammer, hammer!

The hymn paused, wavered, and stopped dead on the final shout.

"By God!" screamed a voice—it was Denton's—"here they are!"

Carthew, with Hopper's arms tightening convulsively round him, started up.

"Is it true?" he asked hoarsely.

"Ay! Listen! They have found us. They are within a few yards of us," said Entwistle.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!" sang Atkinson suddenly and exultantly, and the others joined him.

Entwistle was right. They were found. Reasoned calculation, dogged persistence, and blind indifference to their own safety had brought the search party triumphantly along the mouldering rickety passages of Shawcliffe Pit to the nearest point of contact with Number Three in Belton; and Hold the Fort! proceeding from a subterranean cave of harmony not many yards away, had done the rest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

THE LAST TO LEAVE.

It was night once more, and the great arc lights snapped and sizzled above the waste-heaps and truck-lines surrounding the head of Belton Pit. But the scene was deserted. The centre of interest had shifted to Shawcliffe, a mile away. Here a vast silent throng of human beings stood expectantly in groups, their faces illuminated by the naphtha flares which had been erected here and there about the long-abandoned pithead.

There was news—tense, thrilling news—and the prospect of more. The ancient shaft had been opened and a bucket and tackle rigged—there was no time to ship a cage—and a search party had gone down at dusk. Word had shortly been sent up that the road to the south was still open, though the air was foul and the props rickety. Then came a frantic tug at the rope, and a messenger was hauled to the surface, crying aloud that men were alive in Belton Pit. It was hoped, he added, that the search party would reach them by midnight, for the dividing wall was surprisingly thin. Sir John Carr's order was that blankets and stretchers should be prepared; also food and medical comforts, for the prisoners had fasted for something like sixty hours. With that the messenger had dived below once more, and the game of patience was resumed.

It was past midnight now, and everything was in readiness. On the outskirts of the throng, at the side of the rough and lumpy road, stood a motor-car with two occupants—women. One of them was her ladyship; the other the spectators failed to recognise. But there were rumours about to the effect that she was a visitor to Belton recently arrived from London. Lady Carr had been seen meeting her at the station that afternoon.

The stranger's name, had it been told, would not have conveyed much information to the watchers. It was Nina Tallentyre.

There was a sudden swirl and heave in the crowd. The hand-turned windlass was at work again, and some one was being hauled slowly up the shaft. It was Mr Walker, the manager.

They made a lane for him, until he reached a convenient rostrum formed by an inverted and rusty truck. This he mounted and very briefly told them the news—news which made them laugh foolishly and sob by turns. There was no cheering: they were past that.

In the excitement the next man who followed him up the shaft passed unnoticed. It was Sir John Carr. He saw the hooded motor standing apart, Mr Vick sitting motionless at the wheel. Next moment he was in beside the two women, overalls and all, holding Daphne's hands in a single grimy fist and telling them what we know already.

"Is he perfectly safe?" asked Nina for the tenth time. She did not possess Daphne's aristocratic composure under critical circumstances.

"Yes—but very weak. I am sending him up second. The first is a pit-boy. When Carthew arrives you had better put him in the motor and take him straight home."

"Jack!" said Daphne.

She slipped out of the car and accompanied her husband into the darkness outside the radius of flaring lights.

"Are you going down again?" she asked.

"I am."

"And when are you coming up?" The unflinching courage which upholds so many women in the face of danger had never failed Daphne during those long days and nights. But now the courage was receding with the danger.

Juggernaut smiled.

"When would you have me come up?" he asked.

"Last," said Daphne, suddenly proud. "It is the only place for you. I will wait here. Nina can take her Jim home, and the car can come back later for you and me. Jack!"

Her husband turned and regarded her curiously. Their eyes met.

"Well?" he said.

"Jack," continued Daphne in a low voice, "is there much risk down there—for you, I mean?"

"There is always risk, of a sort, down a coal-pit," replied her husband pontifically. "A little explosive marsh-gas, or a handful of finely divided coal-dust lying in a cranny, might suddenly assert itself. Still, there are risks everywhere. One might be struck down by apoplexy at a vestry meeting."

Daphne gave his arm a squeeze, an ingratiating childish squeeze, suggestive of the Daphne of old negotiating for extension of dress allowance.

"Jack, stay up here! You have done enough."

"Post me, Satanella!" smiled her husband. Then, more seriously: "Daphne, if I came to you and asked for orders now, where would you send me, I being what I am—the proprietor of the pit—and you being what you are—the proprietress of my good name?"

Daphne's fit had passed.

"I should send you," she answered bravely, "down the shaft, with orders to stay there until every one else was safely out."

"I obey," said Juggernaut. "Au revoir!"

"Jack!" said Daphne faintly. Her face was uplifted.

"It will be a coaly one!" said her husband, complying. Then came an accusation.

"Daphne, you are trembling! This is not up to your usual standard."

"I can't help it," said Daphne miserably. "I am a coward. But I don't mind," she added more cheerfully, "so long as no one else knows. You won't give me away!"

At that Juggernaut held her to him a moment longer.

"Daphne, my wife," he whispered suddenly—"thank God for you—at last!"

Then they fell apart, and she ran lightly back to the motor and Nina.

Once she turned and looked over her shoulder, waving her hand prettily. Her face, framed in a motor bonnet and lit by the glare of a naphtha light, looked absurdly round and childish, just as it had done upon a dim and distant morning in Snayling Church.

It was the last time in his life that her man was ever to behold it.

Master Hopper, partially restored by brandy and meat juice, and feeling, on the whole, something of a hero, arrived at the pit-head an hour later, there to be claimed by his mother and hustled off, by more willing hands than he could comfortably accommodate, home to bed. The bucket, which provided standing-room for two passengers, then went down again.

This time it brought up Mr Walker, holding a supporting arm round Carthew—a sick man indeed. He was less hardened to subterranean existence than the rest. Sympathetic murmurs arose. The bucket was swung out from beneath the pulley and landed gently on the edge of the shaft. Carthew stepped out and stood swaying uncertainly.

A tall girl came suddenly forward.

"Jim, dear!" was all she said.

Carthew surveyed her, and smiled weakly.

"Hallo, Nina! That you?"

Miss Tallentyre took his arm.

"The car is waiting for you," she said. "Lean on me hard, old boy!"

And certainly no more desirable prop than this girl, with her splendid youth and glorious vitality, was ever offered to a weary mortal. Carthew, dazed but utterly content, put a feeble arm round the slim shoulders of the woman whose mere hand he had hitherto counted it heaven to touch, and the pair passed away together out of the crowd—and out of this narrative. Happiness has no history.

Others were coming up the shaft now. First Mr Wilkie, in a very fair state of preservation: then Denton, the reprobate, insensible—his hands were in tatters, so fiercely had he worked,—then Atkinson, still sheer drunk with the success of his own hymnology: then Amos Entwistle.

Denton's huge inanimate form was laid on a stretcher, to be carried home under the direction of his wife. (The wives of Renwick and Davis, poor souls, had gone home long ago.) But, the Belton Hall motor returning on that instant, Lady Carr insisted on carrying husband and wife home together. The rush through the night air brought Denton round, and he was able to walk into his own house, leaning undeservedly upon the proudest little woman in the north of England.

Daphne returned to the pit-head for the last time. The rescue work was completed. Surely she might claim him now!

No, the block and tackle were not working. No one else was coming up at present. Only round the shaft a knot of men conferred eagerly. She would wait in the car.

She lay back, wrapped in a rug—a cold dawn was breaking—and closed her eyes. The rush and excitement of the three days had told upon her. She had no clear recollection of having slept for any length of time or eaten at any definite period. She had done work among stricken wives and mothers that Belton village would never forget, but she had not realised this. All her head and heart were filled by the mighty knowledge that after five years of married life she and her husband had found one another.

Meanwhile there was silence round the pit-head.

"Vick," said Daphne, suddenly fearful, "go and find Mr Walker, or some one, and ask when Sir John will be up."

Mr Vick, who had been dozing comfortably at his wheel, clambered down into the muddy road and departed as bidden. Ten minutes later he returned falteringly.

"Mr Walker has just gone down the pit again, my lady," he said. "There has been a slight explosion of coal-dust, I was to tell you. Nothing serious—just a flash and a spit in a holler place in the roof, the message said."

"Is Sir John down there?" Cold fear gripped Daphne's heart.

"Yes, my lady."

"Is he safe, do you know?"

"I couldn't say, my lady," replied Vick doggedly. "I'll inquire."

He turned away, glad to escape, with the brisk demeanour of one anxious to investigate matters. But before he reached the pit-head the answer to all possible inquiries came to meet him, in the form of a slow-moving procession carrying something in its midst.

Very gently the bearers laid the stretcher on the grass by the roadside. Daphne, white, silent, but composed, stooped down and turned back the blanket which covered her husband's face. He lay very still. His head and eyes were roughly bandaged. Daphne whispered, so low that none other could hear.

"Jack—my Jack!"

His voice answered hers, from amid the bandages—faint, but imperturbable as ever.

"I'm all right, dear. Afraid it has got me in the eyes a bit, though. Take me home, wife of mine! You will have to lead me about with a string now!"

Daphne's head sank lower still, and she whispered, almost exultantly--

"At last I can really be of some use to you!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

ANOTHER ALIAS.

"Brian Vereker Carr," inquires a voice, "what time is it?"

"Half-past four, sir," replies the same voice respectfully. "In twenty minutes"—in a more truculent tone—"you will have to go upstairs and get ready for tea. You will have to wash your hands—and your face too, I expect," adds the voice bitterly.

Thus, at the age of eight, does Master Brian Vereker Carr commune with himself—a habit acquired during an infancy spent in a large nursery where there was no one else to talk to. The necessity for this form of duologue no longer exists, for now a sister shares the nursery with him—Brian lives in dread of the day when she shall discover that her manly brother not only owned but once rejoiced in the great doll's house in the corner by the fireplace—but the habit remains. Besides, Miss Carr is only four years old, and gentlemen who have worn knickerbockers for years find it difficult to unbend towards their extreme juniors to any great extent. Hence Mr Brian still confers aloofly with himself, even in the presence of adults. There are touches of Uncle Anthony Cuthbert about Brian.

At present he is inadequately filling a large arm-chair in front of the library fire at Belton. The fire is the sole illuminant of the room. The curtains are closely drawn, for it is a cold winter evening. Brian Vereker continues his observations, now approaching an artistic climax.

"If you go upstairs promptly and obediently, like a good boy, what do you think mother will give you?" inquires voice number one.

"Chocolates!" replies number two, with an inflection of tone which implies that it will be playing the game pretty low down if mother does not.

The owner of both voices then turns an appealing pair of brown eyes upon Daphne, who is sitting on the other side of the fireplace, engaged in the task of amusing her four-year-old daughter.

"We'll see," she replies after the immemorial practice of mothers.... "And suddenly," she continues to the impatient auditor on her lap, "his furry skin fell away, and his great teeth disappeared, and he stood up there straight and beautiful, in shining armour. He was a fairy prince, after all! Brian, dear, tumble out of that arm-chair. Here is dad."

Daphne must have quick ears, for a full half-minute elapses before the door opens and a figure appears in the dim light at the end of the room. Apparently the darkness does not trouble him, for he circumnavigates a round table and a revolving bookcase without hesitation, and finally drops into the arm-chair recently vacated by his son.

"Brian Vereker Carr," inquires a small and respectful voice at his elbow, "do you think dad will play with you to-night?"

"I am sure he will," comes a confident reply from the same quarter, "if you give him two minutes to light his pipe in, and refrain from unseemly demon—demonstrations of affection in the meanwhile."

"It's a hard world for parents," grumbles Juggernaut, getting up. "Where is my tobacco-pouch?"

His hand falls upon the corner of the mantelpiece, but encounters nothing there but a framed photograph of a sun-burned young man on a polo-pony—Uncle Ally, to be precise.

"Now where on earth is that pouch? I know I left it on the left-hand end of the mantelpiece after lunch."

There is a shriek of delight at this from Brian, in which Miss Carr joins, for the great daily joke of the Carr family is now being enacted.

"Where can it be?" wails Juggernaut. "Under the hearthrug, perhaps? No, not there! In the blotting-pad? No, not there! I know! I expect it is behind the coal-box."

Surprising as it may appear, his surmise proves to be correct; and the triumphant discovery of the missing property scores a dramatic success which no repetition seems able to stale. (This is about the fiftieth night of the run of the piece.)

Presently the pipe is filled and lit, Master Carr being permitted to kindle the match and Miss Carr to blow it out, the latter feat only being accomplished by much expenditure of breath and a surreptitious puff from behind her shoulder, contributed by an agency unknown.

"Now, Brian, young fellow," announces Juggernaut, "I will play for ten minutes. Let me speak to the sister first, though."

He lifts his daughter, whom he has never seen, from her mother's knee, and exchanges a few whole-hearted confidences with her upon the subject of her recreations, conduct, dolls, health, and outlook on life in general. Then he restores her, and shouts—

"Come on, Brian Boroo!"

There is a responsive shriek from his son, and the game begins. It is not every boy, Master Brian proudly reflects as he crawls on all fours beneath a writing-table, who can play at blind man's buff with a real blind man!

Daphne leans back in her chair and surveys her male belongings restfully. Time was when this husband of hers, at present eluding obstacles with uncanny facility and listening intently, with the youthful zest of a boy-scout, for the excited breathing of his quarry, found life a less hilarious business. There rises before her the picture of a man led from room to room, steered round corners, dressed like a child, fed like a baby—shattered, groping, gaunt, but pathetically and doggedly cheerful. Neither Daphne nor her husband ever speak of that time now. Not that she regrets it: woman-like, she sometimes feels sorry it is over and gone. She was of real use to her man in those days. Now he seems to be growing independent of her again. Then she smiles comfortably, for she knows that all fears on that score are groundless. He is hers, body and soul. And she——