As the day wore on, my heart sank and sank, and my fears rose and rose, and at five o’clock on that April afternoon, the blow came. I was standing by my room window, looking toward the pit bank. Suddenly I saw in that familiar scene a change. The greater number of the day crew had come up. I waited to see David’s figure, taller than the rest. The men stood in groups talking eagerly, a number crowded round the mouth of the shaft; out of the houses around, women came rushing, then on the air there rose a bitter sharp cry, and one woman leaving the group, which increased each moment round the shaft, ran, clasping her hands and weeping, towards our house. I recognised her, even as she ran, as the bearer of former ill tidings, Mrs Jones. I went downstairs to meet her. I opened the dining-room door. I called to mother, who was sitting close to the window watching, watching for Owen, thinking little of David. She must know all now, better learn the worst at once.
“Mother,” I said, “Mrs Jones has come, and something dreadful has happened in the mine.”
Then I took the weeping, agitated woman’s hand, and mother clasped her other hand, and we both looked hard in her face, and she looked into ours, and in broken words she told her tale.
How few were her words, but how crushing her intelligence! Just as the men were leaving work, the water had burst in like the sea into the workings; most of the day crew had escaped in time, but fourteen were still below.
“Which?” we asked breathlessly, “who were the doomed ones?”
“Not my son?” said mother.
“Not my brother?” said I.
“Yes,” said the woman, “Squire Morgan is still below—and—and—” bringing out the words with a great gasp, her face, her lips, growing white, “My husband—my George.”
She was silent then, and we three looked at each other in blank wonder and surprise; each was saying in her heart of hearts, “My sorrow is the greatest.”
At last I started to my feet.