him; after a short struggle Burnley flung him off with
prodigious power. Hope flew at him again, but incautiously, and the
savage lowering his head, drove it with such fury into Hope's chest that
he sent him to a distance, and laid him flat on his back utterly
breathless. Grace flew to him and raised him.

He was not a man to lose his wits. "To the truck," he gasped, "or we
are lost."

"I'll flood the mine! I'll flood the mine!" yelled Burnley.

Hope made his daughter mount a large fragment of coal we have already
mentioned, and from that she sprang to the truck, and with her excitement
and with her athletic power she raised herself into the full truck, and
even helped her father in after her. But just as she got him on to the
truck, and while he was still only on his knees, that section of the wall
we have called the tank rent and gaped under Burnley's pickaxe, and
presently exploded about six feet from the ground, and a huge volume of
water drove masses of earth and coal before it, and came roaring like a
solid body straight at the coal truck, and drove it against the opposite
wall, smashed the nearest side in, and would have thrown Grace off it
like a feather, but Hope, kneeling and clinging to the side, held her
like a vise.

Grace screamed violently. Immediately there was a roar of exultation
outside from the hitherto silent workers; for that scream told that the
_woman_ was alive, too: the wife of the brave fellow who had won all
their hearts and melted away the icy barrier of class.

Three gigantic waves struck the truck and made it quiver.

The first came half-way up; the second came full two-thirds; the third
dashed the senseless body of Ben Burnley, with bleeding head and broken
bones, against the very edge of the truck, then surged back with him into
a whirling vortex.

Grace screamed continuously; she gave herself up now for lost; and the
louder she screamed, the louder and the nearer the saving party shouted
and hurrahed.

"No, do not fear," cried Hope; "you shall not die. Love is stronger
than death."

The words were scarce out of his mouth when the point of a steel pick
came clean through the stuff; another followed above it; then another,
then another, and then another. Holes were made; then gaps, then larger
gaps, then a mass of coal fell in; furious picks--a portion of the mine
knocked away--and there stood in a red blaze of lamps held up, the
gallant band roaring, shouting, working, led by