Twenty-four hours of blind energy advanced the rescuers three or four hundred yards, but there seemed to be no end to the fall. Progress was growing slower too, for the excavated material had to be carried back farther every time. Once during the second night word was sent up the shaft that two men had been hurt through a fresh fall in the roof, over-eagerness being the cause. Still the work went on. And so Black Sunday drew to a close, to be succeeded by a Monday of a very similar hue. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. VEILLESSE SAIT. Lady Carr was at the pit-head early on Monday morning. She had arrived in the Belton motor, just in time to provide for the conveyance of the two injured men to the county hospital, eleven miles away. She herself passed quietly in and out amid the anxious groups of men and women. She said little: it was not a time for words; but it was noted that she lingered for more than a few minutes in the company of Master Hopper's mother, and that her grave, slow smile appeared to hearten that broken widow mightily. Presently she encountered her husband, whom she had not seen for two nights and a day. "You here?" he said. "Yes. I have sent those two poor men away to Kilchester in the car, and I am waiting for it to come back." Then a note of maternal severity intervened. "Have you been to bed at all since I last saw you?" "Not much," admitted Juggernaut. "But I have a vague recollection of lying down somewhere for a few hours last night. It may have been on the office sofa or it may have been in the sump. What I am more certain of is that I have not washed for days. I feel like Othello. But what has brought you down to the pit?" "I thought you would like to know," said Daphne, "that this affair is in the morning papers." Othello looked, if possible, blacker than before. "Have they got the names?" "Yes, Jim Carthew's too. And what do you think the result has been, Jack? I have had a wire from--from--" for a moment Daphne's concern for the tragedy around her was swallowed up in the joy of the match-making sex over one sinner that repenteth--"whom do you think?" "I don't know." Daphne told him. "It was the first thing she heard when she landed in England. She is _frantic_ about him, and is coming down here to-day. She has offered to sleep anywhere, do anything, if only she may come. Jack, isn't it too heavenly?" Daphne positively crowed. Juggernaut's teeth flashed across his grimy countenance in a sympathetic smile. "You women!" he said softly. "We must fish him out for her after this, Daphne. Well, Mrs Entwistle?" A middle-aged woman with hungry eyes was at his elbow. She was Amos Entwistle's wife. "Would you come and speak to old Mr Entwistle, sir?" she said--"my man's father. He is too rheumatic to move about easy, but he seems to have something on his mind about another way of getting at them." Sir John Carr turned and followed her promptly. "Shall I come too, dear?" said Daphne.