It was a disheartening process; and again and again the results of their efforts were fruitless. Now and again there was the tiny speck … nothing much in itself, but a reason for hope.

As the shaft grew deeper and deeper, naturally the danger increased. There were poisons from rotting vegetation. There was one young man in the town who was a permanent invalid. He had worked with his father and had been down below when there had been a slight fall of earth which meant it was some hours before they could dig him out. As a result he had a perpetual cough and it was obvious that he was slowly dying.

So it was very necessary that the timber which propped up the sides of the shaft was strong enough to hold back the earth.

It was early afternoon. I was on my way to the store. I knew Mrs. Bowles would want to know how little Pedrek was faring: she would listen to accounts of his actions, head on one side, lips pursued, sparkling with self-congratulatory pleasure. Her child, the one who might never have been brought into the world but for her skill.

Just as I was about to enter the shop, I heard the shouts. I stood listening. Mrs. Bowles came out of the shop and stood beside me, her eyes grave.

Men had left their work and were running to a certain spot.

“There’s trouble,” said Mrs. Bowles. “Arthur! Quick!”

Arthur joined us and we ran with the crowd. I felt a fearful apprehension for they were running in the direction of our shaft.

I was on the edge of the crowd.

I saw Gervaise. Men were crowding round him. I tried to push towards him.

I heard someone say: “Someone’s down there.”

“It’s Cartwright. It must be …” said another.

“Gervaise!” I called. “Gervaise.”

He did not hear me.

“What’s happening?” I said.

One of the men turned and looked at me. “Timber must have given way.”

I came a little nearer. It was not easy to force my way through.

Gervaise said: “He’s down there. I’m going to get him.”

“You’re a fool, man,” said Bill Merrywether, one of the oldest and most experienced of the miners. “You’d never do it.”

“I’m going,” repeated Gervaise.

“Gervaise! Gervaise!” I cried.

He turned briefly and gave me a smile of tenderness.

Bill Merrywether attempted to restrain him but he pushed him aside. I watched him disappear down the shaft.

Someone turned and looked at me. It was one of the miners.

“It’s all right, me dear,” he said.

Someone else said: “He’s crazy. It’ll be the two of ’em now.”

“What’s going on?” I begged. “Tell me.”

Mrs. Bowles was beside me. She put an arm round me. “It’s a fall,” she said. “It will be all right.”

“My God,” said someone. “He’s got guts.”

“Gone in to save his mate.”

“Madness. Suicide.”

Nobody answered.

I tried to fight my way to the head of the mine, but several of them held me back.

“You can’t do nothing,” said one of the miners. “We’ve just got to wait, my dear, to be ready if …”

I don’t know how long it was. Time stood still. The silence was intense. All that sky … the scene which had become so repugnant to me … and all these people now joined together as though in silent prayer.

How long? I do not know. Seconds … minutes … hours. I kept thinking of them in that room, Gervaise glaring at Justin. Gervaise the gambler, Justin the cheat … and they were down in the mine together … the mine I had always subconsciously feared and hated.

There was a sudden shout.

Something was happening. As one person we moved towards the mine.

I saw Justin then. He was unconscious. Gervaise was holding him, pushing him upwards. Several men had rushed forward. They had Justin now. They had dragged him out. For a moment I glimpsed Gervaise. I saw his face triumphant … grimed with dirt. I saw the flash of his white teeth.

And then there was a rumbling sound. Someone reached out to seize him … but he was no longer there.

We heard the terrible sound of falling earth. The shaft had collapsed … taking Gervaise with it.

It took them four hours to dig him out. There was mourning throughout the township for a brave man. And I had become a widow.

Justin was carried to the shack. Morwenna left Golden Hall and came to him. He was shaken and bruised but there was nothing from which he could not recover.

My emotions were in too much turmoil for me to think clearly. I believed many of them were concerned for me. There was I, six months pregnant, having lost my husband in dramatic circumstances.

Morwenna insisted on looking after me, as well as Justin.

She could not speak of Gervaise’s heroic deed, but I knew it was uppermost in her mind.

The whole of the township wanted to take care of me. They did all they could to help—each in his or her own way. I was deeply touched and I thought how disaster brought out the best in people. The good and the evil, they were there in us all. Recently I had thought a great deal about the lust for gold, the greed and the envy. I had seen it in this place so clearly where now I saw the caring compassion.

I thought often of Gervaise, remembering the happy times—how kind he had been on our wedding night; how gentle he had always been to me. I forgot that incident at the auberge; I forgot the debts. When one has lost someone one has loved, one remembers only the good things.

I had a great deal to think about; my future had changed.

Ben came to see me.

He sat in the shack and looked at me sorrowfully.

“Oh, Angel, what can I say? If there is anything I can do to help …”

I smiled. “That is what everyone is saying to me.”

“If only …”

I looked at him pleadingly. I knew what he was going to say and I could not bear it.

“I suppose you will go home now,” he said.

I nodded. “I shall have to wait until the child is born.”

He looked round the shack. “I hate to think of you in this place.”

“I’ll be all right. It has happened to others.”

“And only Mrs. Bowles. I shall have Dr. Field here. He shall stay at the Hall.”

I smiled wanly. “You are forgetting, Ben. This is nothing to do with you.”

“Every concern of yours is mine, too.”

“How is the mine going?”

He did not answer. He looked very sad.

I said: “Everyone here is so kind to me.”

“I shall make sure everything is done … everything possible.”

“Thank you, Ben. It was good of you to call.”

“You speak as though I am just one of the others.”

“That, Ben, is really what you have become.”

“I’ll talk to you later. At the moment you are too shocked.”

I said, “Thank you,” and he left me.

Gervaise was buried in the graveyard. They gave him a hero’s funeral. The parson came from Walloo to preside.

It was very moving. I was there, Morwenna on one side of me, Justin on the other. I was a pathetic figure … the widow soon to bear the dead man’s child … the man who had died a most heroic death and had won the admiration of every single one of them.

The parson spoke of him most movingly.

“His death is an example of the supreme sacrifice. His friend was in danger. No one could have expected him to take such a terrible risk. But he did not hesitate. They had come out together; they had worked together in amity; they were friends.”

Visions of them, facing each other across the card table, came to me … Gervaise, departed from his usual nonchalance, blazing with anger; Justin crouching before him: Gervaise seizing Justin and shaking him as though he were a dog.

“Greater love hath no man than he who layeth down his life for his friend,” said the parson.

I saw that many of those present were openly weeping.

And so they laid Gervaise to rest not far from the remains of David Skelling.

I thought: He will never go home now. He will never find that fortune which he was so sure would be his.

Poor Gervaise. He had always lost.

Morwenna had left Golden Hall, much to Lizzie’s sorrow. She visited us frequently and was constantly bringing gifts for the baby. She was worried about me, too.

“Angelet,” she said, “you must go and stay at the Hall. Your baby must be born there.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Thank you, but that is not possible. You are so good to us all and it is so kind …”

“But I want you to come,” she insisted, her eyes filling with tears. “I love little babies.”

“We have to be in our own homes, Lizzie,” I said. “We just cannot go into other people’s.”

“Ben wants you to come.” She smiled triumphantly. “He says he is going to insist.”

“I couldn’t, Lizzie.”

She thrust that aside. I could see she thought Ben’s wish must be law.

I had long talks with Justin and Morwenna.

“We’re going home,” said Morwenna with delight. “We have decided that, haven’t we, Justin? I have written to Pa and Mother. They’ll be so very pleased. They’ve hated our being so far away. We are going to take you with us, Angelet.”

I looked down at my spreading figure.

“We’re going to wait,” said Morwenna. “We’ve worked it all out. We won’t go before the baby is born. You couldn’t travel yet and then you wouldn’t want to until the baby is, say … six months old.”

“That will be nearly nine months. You wouldn’t want to wait all that time. You’d better go now. I’ll make my own way home.”

“Of course we wouldn’t do that, would we, Justin? You see, if you know that you are going, it is not so bad. You count the days … You tick them off as they pass and you know it’s getting nearer. What is so dreadful is not knowing when it is going to end. We want to wait for nine months, don’t we, Justin?”

Justin answered: “Yes, we do and we shall. We’re not going to leave you here, Angelet. We shall all go back together. After all, even if we weren’t going to wait for you we couldn’t just walk out. In the meantime I shall get someone to help me work the mine.”

“Oh Justin, you can’t go down there again … after what happened.”

“I think I know where it went wrong. There was so much damp down there that the wood rotted. You get to learn these things, you know. You don’t make the same mistakes twice.”

“I know you are longing to get away after all you went through … particularly Justin. Please don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.”

But they would not hear of it.

Later I talked to Justin alone.

He said: “I feel so ashamed. Only you in this place can know how ashamed I feel.”

“It’s all over,” I said. “Gervaise is dead. Only the three of us knew what happened on that night. You can’t go on thinking of it forever.”

“We had not spoken in friendship … since it happened,” he went on. “He despised me, I know he did. I saw it in his eyes …”

“Yes,” I said. “Cheating at cards. It was the ultimate sin. Gervaise was obsessed by gambling …”

“So many of us are.”

“Are you going to give it up?”

He looked helplessly into space.

I said: “You could go home. There would be a place for you with Morwenna’s father …”

“I know. I’m going to try. I feel I can never forget this. It was so noble of him.”

“There was a lot of nobility in Gervaise.”

“Oh yes. He hated me. He despised me. There was no need for him to come down like that. If he had not, he would be here today. I should be lying where he is. Why did he do it? He knew what a risk he was taking.”

“He liked to take risks. He was a gambler right to the end. He thought he could win … always. He was betting then against the biggest odds ever. But this time he was betting for a different reason. Not for gain … but for another man’s life.”

“And he lost,” said Justin.

“No, he won. He saved your life, Justin. That was his aim.”

I turned away to hide my emotion.

“Oh, Angelet, I’m sorry. I should have been the one. I’m the unworthy one.”

I said: “You have made Morwenna happy. That is wonderful. You have your son. You will love him and care for him. Justin, we have to forget what we have done in the past. We have to grow better for our experiences … we have to learn from them.”

He looked at me very seriously and said: “I shall do all I can for you, Angelet. I shall try to repay Gervaise through you.”

The weeks passed. Everyone in the township wanted to show their appreciation to the widow of a hero.

Morwenna was my constant companion. She was very happy at the prospect of going home. She talked of it most of the time. “Eight more months … the time will soon be gone.”