“If one on 'em should fall I'm th' one as it had better fall on. There is na mony foak as ud miss Joan Lowrie. Yo' ha' work o' yo're own to do.”
She stepped into the gallery before he could protest, and he could only follow her. She went before, holding the Davy high, so that its light might be thrown as far forward as possible. Now and then she was forced to stoop to make her way around a bending prop; sometimes there was a fallen mass to be surmounted, but she was at the front still when they reached the other end without finding the object of their search.
“It—he is na there,” she said. “Let us try th' next passage,” and she turned into it.
It was she who first came upon what they were looking for; but they did not find it in the next passage, or the next, or even the next. It was farther away from the scene of the explosion than they had dared to hope. As they entered a narrow side gallery, Grace heard her utter a low sound, and the next minute she was down upon her knees.
“Theer's a mon here,” she said, “It's him as we're lookin' fur.”
She held the dim little lantern close to the face,—a still face with closed eyes, and blood upon it Grace knelt down too, his heart aching with dread.
“Is he———” he began, but could not finish.
Joan Lowrie laid her hand upon the apparently motionless breast and waited almost a minute, and then she lifted her own face, white as the wounded man's—white and solemn, and wet with a sudden rain of tears.
“He is na dead,” she said. “We ha' saved him.”
She sat down upon the floor of the gallery and lifting his head laid it upon her bosom, holding it close as a mother might hold the head of her child.