“‘Ask Wilum,’ says some one, ‘he was here at the time;’ and some one asked me. But I had no occasion to speak, for just then, alarmed at the child’s not going back as usual, the little gal’s mother came shrieking out and crying—
“‘Where’s little Patty? where’s little Patty?’ and then, when no one spoke, she gave a sort of pitiful moan, and sank slowly down—first on her knees, and then sideways on to a heap of bricks; and I remember thinking it was best, for I could not find it in my heart to go to her help, but kept on tearing away at the hot bricks and rubbish.
“It was puzzling and worriting; for one could not seem to be sure of where anything had once stood, in the horrible confusion before us. One said the stoke-hole had been here, and another there; but even I who had worked there two years, could not be sure.
“Hour after hour went by, and still we worked on; while as every big rafter or beam was lifted and dragged away, I was obliged to turn my head, for I felt sick, and the place seemed to swim, for I expected to see Patty’s little bright curls torn out and hanging to the jagged wood, and that underneath there would be something horrible and crushed.
“I know it wasn’t manly; but what can I say, when there was a little bright, blue-eyed child in the case—one of those little things whose look will make your great rough hand fall to your side when raised in anger, while the tiny thing can lead you about and do what she likes with you? P’r’aps I ain’t manly; but somehow, children always seems to get the upper hand of me.
“And so on we worked, hour after hour; men getting tired and dropping off, but always plenty more ready to take their places; while I—I never thought of it, and kept on tearing away till my hands bled, and the sweat ran down my face; but I turned away every time there was something large lifted, for I said to myself ‘She must be under that!’ And then again and again, in my mind, I seemed to see the torn and crushed face of my darling, and her long curls dabbled in blood.
“In the midst of the piled-up, blackened ruins—bricks, mortar, tiles, lead, and ragged and split beams, huge pieces of wood snapped and torn like matches—we toiled on hour after hour till the dark night came, when the gas pipes that had been laid bare and plugged were unstopped, and the gas lit, so that it flared and blazed and cast a strange wild light over the ruined place. There had been flames burst forth two or three times from parts of the ruins, but a few sprinklings from the fire engine in attendance had put them out; and as we worked on the rubbish grew cooler and cooler.
“Some said that the child could not have been there, but the sight of her mother tearing out was sufficient, when once she got away from the kind people who had her in their house—a house where but part of the windows had been broken by the explosion—and came running to where I was at work, snatching at the bricks and wood, till I got two or three to take her back for I couldn’t have left where I was to have saved my life. But I remember so well asking myself why it was that women will let down their back hair when they’re in a state of excitement, and make ’emselves look so wild.
“By-and-by someone came to say how bad my wife was, and that she wanted to see me; but I felt that I couldn’t go, and kept on in a fevered sort of way, work, work; and I’ve thought since that if she had been dying it would have been all the same. However, I heard soon after that she seemed a little better; and I found out afterwards that a doctor there had given the poor thing something that seemed to calm her and she went to sleep.
“It would have been a strong dose, though, that would have sent me off to sleep, as still on, hour after hour, I worked there, never tiring, but lifting beams that two or three men would have gone at, and tossing the rubbish away like so much straw.