“What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don’t get to Bindon?”
“By noon to-morrow, by twelve o’clock noon; that’s the plot; that’s what they’ve schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble North—he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There’d been a strike in the mine, an’ my friend had took it in hand with knuckle-dusters on. He isn’t the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife. Then three of the strikers that had been turned away—they was the ringleaders—they laid a plan that’d make the devil sick. They’ve put a machine in the mine, an’ timed it, an’ it’ll go off when my friend comes out of the mine at noon to-morrow.”
Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her man—him that she was to marry—was the head of a mine also at Selby, forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with piercing significance.
“Without a second’s warning,” he urged, “to go like that, the man that was so good to my little gal, an’ me with a chance to save him, an’ others too, p’r’aps. You won’t let it be. Say, I’m pinnin’ my faith to you. I’m—”
Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a chair. Presently he opened his eyes. “It’s want o’ food, I suppose,” he said. “If you’ve got a bit of bread and meat—I must keep up.”
She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned towards him again. Her ears had caught a sound outside in the underbush. He had heard also, and he half staggered to his feet.
“Quick-in here!” she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. “Lie down on my bed, and I’ll bring you vittles as quick as I can,” she added. Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.
“Hello, Jinny, fixin’ up for to-morrow?” the man said, stepping inside, with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.
She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinising glance. His face had a fatuous kind of smile.
“Been celebrating the pigeons?” she asked drily, jerking her head towards the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time before.