"Ay," broke in Matthew, "badly! I wadna say, but it micht be that he's badly; but maybe he's not."
"Do ye ken, boys," said Andrew quietly, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and speaking with slow deliberation, "I'm beginnin' to think Black Jock is guilty o' Geordie's death. Geordie, as we a' ken, had ay something against Walker. There was something he kent aboot the black brute that lately kept him gey quiet; for, if ye noticed, whenever Geordie went to him about anybody's complaint, the men aye won. I ken Walker hated him, an' I'm inclined to think that he has deliberately put Geordie into this place, kennin' that the lower seam had been worked out lang, lang syne. His plans wad tell him as muckle about the workin's, and I ken, at least, he's never been in Geordie's place since it was started, an' there's nae ither places drivin' up sae far as this. They're a' stoppit afore they come this length; an' forby, frae what Rundell has let drap the day, he never kent that the coal was being worked as far up as this. By ——! Peter, gin I could prove what I suspect, I'd murder the dirty brute this nicht! I would that!"
"Would Nellie no' ken, think ye, what it was that Geordie had against Black Jock that kept him sae quiet?" enquired Peter.
"I couldna' say," answered Andrew, "but some day when I get the chance I'll maybe ask her, an' if it is as I think, then there'll be rows."
"Let me ken, Andrew," broke in Matthew. "Let me ken if ever ye discover onything; an' ye can count on me sharin' the penalties o' hell alang wi' ye for the murder o' the big black brute."
"I heard," said Peter, "that he was boozin' wi' Mag Robertson and Sanny. But we'll no' be long in kennin', for ill-doin' canna hide."
After three frantic days of fighting against calamity, during which Andrew never left the fight except for that brief journey to tell Nellie the news, at last they came upon the crushed mass of bloody pulp and rags, smashed together so that the one could not be told from the other—father and son, a heap of broken bones and flesh and blood.... And no pen can describe accurately the scene.
The light had gone out from one woman's heart, the hope had been crushed from her life. The rainbow which had promised so much vanished. The lust and urge had gone out of eager life. Never again would the world seem fair and beautiful. Instead, all the weary fight and desperate battle with poverty and privation over again; the dull misery and the drab gray existence, and always the pain—the heavy, dragging pain of a broken life. With a woman's "Oh! my God!" the world for one heart stood still, and the blind fate of things triumphed, crushing a woman's soul in the process.