“An’ a step-mother,” agreed Mogger, tucking the tatters of his shirt inside his waist-belt; “an’ here’s Buck wi’ the tackle at last. Think she’s loose enough, Randal?”
“There’s one yet—look out!”
Mogger stood back while the chips flew, whirring out of the depths with a nasty hum. Randal was stripped to singlet and gungarees, and the muscles ran on his hairy arms and bared chest. The dust of the earth was thick on him before his time, and the sweat dripped down his lean face. Above the bark of the blade his breaths sounded distinct as the throb from an engine-room, and Mogger guessed in some dim way that the whole strength of the man was meeting something beyond the singing creaking root. But because, to his belief, Randal had no relatives the wide world through, his guesswork could carry him no further.
The last root snapped with an upward curl. Randal climbed out of the open grave and lay flat whilst his breath came back. And the roar of quick blood through his ears and his heart beat out one tune as it had beat it these three days past: “Effie and Kiliat. Effie and Kiliat.”
All the station was saying it. All the station looked at Randal to hear what he was saying. And Randal kept shut lips, and believed and disbelieved and believed again, and could
