He is quite mad now; I am sure of it from his
voice."
Benita thought a minute, then she answered:
"We must build up the passage. Look," and she pointed to the lumps of
rock that the explosion of their mine had shaken down from the roof,
and the slabs of cement that they had broken from the floor with the
crowbar. "At once, at once," she went on; "he will not come back for
some hours, probably not till night."
So they set to work, and never did Benita labour as it was her lot to do
that day. Such of the fragments as they could lift they carried between
them, others they rolled along by help of the crowbar. For hour after
hour they toiled at their task. Luckily for them, the passage was not
more than three feet wide by six feet six high, and their material was
ample. Before the evening they had blocked it completely with a wall
several feet in thickness, which wall they supported on the inside with
lengths of the firewood lashed across to the old hinges and bolt-holes,
or set obliquely against its face.
It was done, and they regarded their work with pride, although it seemed
probable that they were building up their own tomb. Because of its
position at an angle of the passage, they knew that Meyer could not get
to it with a pole to batter it down.
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