Chapter 38

Tuesday was a day that was not soon forgotten at the mills. Scarcely waiting for the smoking timbers to cool, swarms of workmen attacked the ruins and attempted to clear their way to the point where Spencer and McGinnis had last been seen. Fortunately, that portion of the building had only been touched by the fire, and it was evident that the floors and roof had been carried down with the fall of those nearest to it. For this reason there was the more hope of finding the bodies unharmed by fire—perhaps, even, of finding a spark of life in one or both of them. This last hope, however, was sorrowfully abandoned when hour after hour passed with no sign of the missing men.

All night they worked by the aid of numerous electric lights hastily placed to illuminate the scene; and when Wednesday morning came, a new shift of workers took up the task that had come to be now merely a search for the dead. So convinced was every one of this that the men gazed with blanched faces into each other’s eyes when there came a distinct rapping on a projecting timber near them. In the dazed silence that followed a faint cry came from beneath their feet.

With a shout and a ringing cheer the men fell to work—it was no ghost, but a living human voice that had called! They labored more cautiously now, lest their very zeal for rescue should bring defeat in the shape of falling brick or timber.