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; maddened by thirst he had recourse to that last extremity better men have been driven to; he made a cut with his clasp-knife in the breast of the dead miner, and tried to swallow jellied blood.
This horrible relief never lasts long, and the penalty follows in a few hours; but in the meantime the savage obtained relief, and even vigor, from this ghastly source, and seeing Hope and his daughter lying comparatively weak and exhausted, he came and sat down at a little distance in front of them: that was partly done to divert Hope from examining his shambles and his unnatural work.