"let it trickle very
slowly over your tongue and down your throat; it is the throat and the
adjacent organs which suffer most from thirst." He then took a spoonful
himself, not to drink after an assassin. He then gave a spoonful to
Burnley with the same instructions, and rose from his seat and gave the
can to Grace, and said, "The rest of this pittance must not be touched
for six hours at least."

Burnley, instead of complying with the wise advice given him, tossed the
liquid down his throat with a gesture, and then dashing down the spoon,
said, "I'll have the rest on't if I die for it," and made a furious rush
at Grace Hope.

She screamed faintly, and Hope met him full in that incautious rush, and
felled him like a log with a single blow. Burnley lay there with his
heels tapping the ground for a little while, then he got on his hands
and knees, and crawled away to the farthest corner of his own place, and
sat brooding.

That night when Grace retired to rest Hope lay down at her feet, with his
hammer in his hand, and when one slept the other watched, for they feared
an attack. Toward the morning of the next day Grace's quick senses heard
a mysterious noise in Burnley's quarter; she woke her father. Directly he
went to the place, and he found Burnley at work on his knees tearing away
with his hands and nails at the ruins of the shaft. Apparently fury
supplied the place of strength, for he had raised quite a large heap
behind him, and he had laid bare the feet up to the knees of a dead
miner. Hope reported this in a hushed voice to Grace, and said, solemnly,
"Poor wretch, he's going mad, I fear."

"Oh no," said Grace, "that would be too horrible. Whatever should we do?"

"Keep him to his own side, that is all," said Hope.

"But," objected Grace in dismay, "if he is mad, he won't listen, and he
will come here and attack me."

"If he does," said Hope, simply, "I must kill him, that's all."

Burnley, however, in point of fact, kept more and more aloof for many
hours; he never left his work till he laid bare the whole body of that
miner, and found a pickaxe in his dead hand. This he hid, and reserved it
for deadly uses; he was not clear in his mind whether to brain Hope with
it, and so be revenged on him for having shut him up in that mine, or
whether to peck a hole in the tank and destroy all three by a quicker
death than thirst or starvation. The savage had another and more horrible
reason for keeping out of sight