“The owners were kind enough, and did all they could to encourage the men, sending out beer and other refreshments; but the heap of stuff to move was something frightful, and more than once I felt quite in despair, and ready to sit down and weakly cry. But I was at it again the next moment, and working with the best of them.
“‘Hadn’t you better leave now?’ said one of my masters; ‘I’ll see that everything is done.’
“I gave him one look, and he laid his hand kindly on my shoulder, and said no more to me about going; and I heard him say, ‘Poor fellow!’ to some one by him, as he turned away.
“We came upon the biler quite half-a-dozen yards out of its place, ripped right across where the rivers went; while as for the engine, it was one curious bit of iron tangle—rode, and bars, and pieces of iron and brass, twisted and turned and bent about, like so much string; and the great flywheel was broken in half-a-dozen places.
“This showed us now where the great cellar-like place—the stoke-hole—was; and we worked down now towards that; but still clearing the way, for how could I tell where the child might be? But it was weary, slow work; every now and then rigging up shears, and fastening ropes and pulley and sheaf, to haul up some great piece of iron or a beam; and willing as every one was, we made very little progress in the dark night.
“Once we had to stop and batter away a wall with a scaffold pole; for the police declared it to be unsafe, and the sergeant would not let us work near it till it was down; and all the while I was raging like a madman at the check. But it was of no use, and the man was right. He was doing his duty, and not like me, searching for the little crushed form of my darling in the cruel ruins. The people made me worse, for they would talk and say what they thought, so that I could hear. One would say she might still be alive, another would shake his head, and so on; when I kept stopping, in spite of all I tried not, listening to what they said, and it all seemed so much lost time.
“The engine-room was now cleared, and in spite of my trembling and horror, as every big piece was disturbed, nothing had been found; but all at once, as we were trying to clear behind the biler, and get down to the stoke-hole, one of the men gate a cry. I caught at the man nearest to me, and then lights, rubbish, the strange wild scene, all seemed to run round me, and I should have fallen only the man held me up, and some one brought me some brandy.
“I was myself again directly, and stumbling over the bricks to where a knot of men had collected, and a policeman had his bull’s-eye lantern open, and they were stooping to look at something that lay just under a beam they had raised—to the left of where I expected she would be found.
“‘Smashed,’ I heard some one, with his back to me, say; and then some one else, ‘Poor little thing, she must have run past here!’
“Then, with my throat dry and my eyes staring, I crept up and thrust two men aside, right and left, when the others made way for me without speaking, and, when I got close up, I covered my face with my hands, and softly knelt down.