“I am too thankful to say what I ought to say, about them and about you--thankful that you are alive,” said David, and his voice trembled a little. “One second, a half-second, later and you would have been fairly under the slide. As it was, we had to dig you out; and--and Vinnie, I hope no human being will ever suffer as I did when we found you. I--I thought you were dead, and that I had killed you!” “It wouldn’t have been you,” she said softly; “it would have been the thing we call Business; the thing that is killing all the kindliness, all the fairness, all the best there is in us.” “No,” he denied sturdily, “I can’t let you shift the blame that way. I knew what ought to be done here; I have known it all along. If I had made a fight for it with your father, as I should have done, he would have given in.” “I don’t know,” she said wearily. “That was what I went down to the _Athenia_ for this evening--before I met Judith. Father wouldn’t listen to me; and now----” David knew what it was she had begun to say and could not finish; that now Eben Grillage had lost the daughter for whom, at the end of the ends, all the cost-cuttings and life-risking economies had been made. Hence, he tried again to comfort her. “We must always give him the benefit of the doubt,” he interposed. “From what Judith told you, it is perfectly plain that the roof hasn’t fallen of its own accord at this particular time, though there isn’t much doubt but that it would have come down some time. Within the past few days a crack had opened in one side of it big enough to conceal a charge of dynamite--or a time-clock infernal machine, which was probably what was used. It was timed to go off between the shifts, and Regnier and I were the only ones they meant to catch. It was the natural inference that we would stay in the heading to see the night shift come on; Regnier always does that.” As if the mention of his name had evoked him, the fiery little French-Canadian came up to the heading with a flickering candle-end shielded between his hands. His first inquiry was for the president’s daughter. “Mees Virginia--you vill not been keel? Zat ees _tres bon_!” “What did you find out, Jean?” David demanded. “Eet ees bad--ver’ bad. They vill deeg on the other side--peek--peek--but zat loose stuff she ees come down so fast as they peek it out, _oui_. Eet ees come down on our side, _aussi_, like one damn’ hopper--pardon, M’am’selle--like one hopper full with loose stones.” “We have no tools on this side?” “Nossing moch. The men s’all deeg with zat what they ’ave; the peek and shovel of the mucker; but eet ees nossing.”