“I’m all right,” he said; “but listen. Speak to me; I can hear. I’ve heard ever since we moved. I’ve wanted to say so, but I wanted to go on hearing your father talk to Quarry. I’ve heard it all. I’m done with secrets; I’m pretty near done with theirs. Speak to me, Emma; I can prove it.”
“I’m so bursting-out happy, I can’t talk much,” said she.
Her speech followed her in his voice. “I’m so bursting-out happy, I can’t talk much.’ But I can hear! Emma, Quarry and your poppa have been setting it up since we came here, and I was afraid to say I heard, for fear two couldn’t keep a secret. Emma, we want the plant’s pension, and we’re going to get it!
“You’re going now,” he said, “to run out to the plant—to run your best; when you get there, go to the furnace. If you keep right on By the Tracks, nobody’ll mind you. Quarry’s bought the furnace-minders, and they’re going to leave for the station to report a disturbance in the factory. The Devil’s Crook is in the little house by the furnace; it is by the door. You take it as you pass—no one’ll be there—and when you see a light in the factory you open the centre door and make a flare, for the police can’t see in the dark. You’ll catch ’em; O Emma, hurry! I’ve got a good chance to fix Quarry, and he didn’t warn me of that blast, or I wouldn’t be here now. He put his flag behind his back when he saw me come, and I walked right on. Hurry, Emma girl! Don’t burn yourself!”
Emma could feel that he wanted to go himself. She caught up her shawl. “Is it the powder house?” she asked.
“For God’s sake,” he said loudly, “get started! Of course it is!”
She ran out into the wide darkness. She was racing death, and she knew it.
XII.
THE EYE OF GOD.
“And the eye of God shall pierce the lengthy darkness.”
Emma’s first thought was of the time that it would take her to get to the plant. Young Bentley had once run a mile under five minutes, and his feat had been in the newspapers; but she could not, of course, count on herself for like speed. She felt that the cinder flare would light up her life’s crisis. Jarlsen’s excited voice echoed in her mind, and the thought that Quarry might have saved him with the warning flag, instead of letting him come unchecked on live powder, urged her on the faster. She saw that to-day’s attempt at the Tracks was a forced incident, intended to look like the strike’s crisis. She remembered her own part in it with laughter.