"When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; then I felt your heart. And since we got here I've found an air-pipe up here along the wall, and broken it."
George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud noise disturbed him—tortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was—a slow drip or trickle of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that enwrapped them—silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been delving at her heart.
"Burrows!—that water—maddens me." He moved his head miserably. "Could you get some? The brandy-flask has a cup."
"There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, and dashed it over you. I'll go again."
George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow.
He drank greedily.
"Thanks! Put it by me—there; that's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave me. You can't do anything—and you—you might still try for it. There are one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could explain—"
But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had to put his ear close to the scorched lips.
"No," he said gloomily, "I don't leave a man while there's any life in him. Besides, there's no chance—I don't know the mine."
Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such agony rose in George it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor Letty!—his child that was to be!—his own energy of life, he had been so conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death—all gone, all done!—his little moment of being torn from him by the inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing.