"I'm ready to help you always, as you know," was the girl's ready reply. "But it grieves me that father is so completely German in his actions." "It is but natural, Ella. He is a German. If he were English, and lived secretly in Germany, he would act as an Englishman. All enemy aliens should have been interned long ago." Ever and anon, on their way back to the opening, they both stumbled upon the wire, while Seymour, carrying the petrol-tin, evidently filled with some heavy explosive, followed his well-beloved, who held the torch. At last they emerged from the close atmosphere of the long, tortuous gallery that had been secretly driven to a point exactly beneath the railway-line in the very heart of the hill, and once again stood upright in the shed. Their clothes were muddy, and their hands and faces were besmeared with mud. At last Kennedy put down the square heavy tin, the cap of which he very carefully unscrewed, and then examined it by aid of his torch, smelling it critically. Taking from his pocket a strong clasp-knife he went back into the tunnel again for about fifty yards. With a swift cut he severed the lead which led away to the concealed tins of explosive, and bringing it back with him to the shed, took the severed end, unravelled the silk insulation of both wires, bared them by scraping them thoroughly with his knife, and with expert hand attached them to a detonator which he had taken from the tins concealed at the end of the gallery. Having done this he put the detonator into the opening of the petrol-tin which, with its wire lead, he afterwards carefully concealed behind a heap of straw in the corner. He had taken care to replace the cable leading from the cigar-box exactly as he had found it, therefore, to the eye, it looked as though nothing had been touched. The cable ran into the underground passage, it was true, but it returned back again into the cow-shed, and into the tin of high-explosive. Kennedy, who knew something of mining, had noticed that half-way along the working a quantity of earth had been left for the purpose of tamping the gallery, in order that the force of the explosion should go upward, and not come back along the subterranean passage. Before the Kaiser's secret agents exploded the mine they would, no doubt, fill up the gallery at that point before completing the electric circuit. It was evident that on that night the four men had made a final inspection before exploding the mine. Therefore, quite confident in what they had achieved, Ella and her lover crept back, and away through the wood to where they had left the car. At six o'clock on the following morning, the Victoria Hotel in Sheffield being always open, Ella entered alone, and ascended to her room. Next evening at half-past seven she met her lover again in the Ecclesall Road, and he drove her out in the car away through Eckington and Clowne, to the wood from which they had watched on the previous night.