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ISRAEL MORT. .

CHAPTER I.

SPRING-TIME AND STORM.

THOUGH on the fifteenth of March school was still over at the early winter hour, it was not till past five in the afternoon that David Mort came into the little path that led through Brynnant Wood up to the village. An unusually companionable fit had made him loiter with some of his schoolfellows, who were bird-nesting in the copse below.

He had not assisted them; but, sitting astride on the topmost stone of the stile, had watched their proceedings with a low, reflective whistle; occasionally offering lazily a word of advice, which he bore to have scoffed or laughed at with unruffled good temper.

He was going through the wood alone now; making every little movement in the brambles below, or in the boughs above, an excuse for loitering or standing still; enjoying the warm sun on his closed eyes; and swinging his satchel in a circle that kept an unseen nest of fledglings open-mouthed with affright, so long as he remained in their view.

It was his twelfth birthday. For six years he had passed through this wood four times almost every day, yet it had attractions for him this afternoon such as it never had before. The truth was that never before had David been strong enough to feel himself a part of the bright strong life of the wood as he did now.

It had been on account of his physical weakness that

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his father Israel Mort, Overman at the Cwm Aber Colliery, had, on finding him unfit for pit work, apparently lost all recollection of his very existence; scarcely seeming to see him when he crossed his path or when he sat opposite to him at meal-times. Thus David had out-stayed nearly all school-fellows of his own age, had learnt almost as much as his master was able to teach him, and had arrived at his twelfth year and at a sound state of health with so little notice on the part of Israel, that David and his mother began to flatter themselves this pleasant state of things might last another five or six years.

David had dreams of slipping one day into the schoolmaster's place; and he cherished a wild hope that nothing might occur to bring the recollection of his useless existence to his father's absorbed mind till some such end should have been obtained.

On one after another of his schoolfellows-boys who had learned perhaps from the same book as himself-the dread fiat had come. Almost every week David's eye marked some ruddy face grow prematurely old, and thoughtful, reckless, and defiant-or pale, and full of vague, unearthly fears. Then the face would be missing from the familiar row against the white schoolroom wall-and met no more-except hurrying with the black swarm that passed between the mine and Brynnant-all haste-blacknesswhites of eyes, and white teeth.

When David prayed 'deliver us from evil,' he thought of the mine only. When he heard of heaven being above the stars, nothing seemed to him so natural and certain as that the mine-with all its horrors, destructive fires, and treacherous waters-should be the very mouth of the world of darkness, confusion, and misery beneath.

When one of his companions passed into it, he had his quiet way of mourning for him as if he had been removed from the world by death. He haunted such spots as the young miner had liked best-made gifts to his little brother or sister, remembered him at church and on his knees at night, often woke disturbed by the imaginary sound throbbing through his soft pillow of the chip-chip' of the pickaxe wielded by the black hand of his playmate

in some grim hole too small for any bulkier form than his own to work in.

A keen sense of gratitude for the safety and peaceful sunshine of his own life in the midst of such changes and dangers had had its effect on David's character; for it seemed to him that no amount of patience, conscientious industry of mind, self-sacrifice in little things, and profound humility of soul, could ever repay God or men for the peace vouchsafed to him in permitting him to remain upon the open sunny face of the earth, instead of forcing him down into its dark and terrible mysteries.

He began to feel that he led a charmed life, the spell of which a breath might break.

His enjoyment of it was usually quiet; almost hidden, as a thing to which he doubted his own right; but in the wood that afternoon everything seemed to help to deepen and strengthen it.

The sky which-each time the white clouds rolled over it was left clearer and fresher of hue, like a beautiful eye after resting under its white lid-the sky itself seemed tempting David to hope anything, everything.

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As this was the time his father would be home, David other day would have waited till he saw the little parlour window obscured by steam, so that he might slip in unnoticed, while the Overman, stripped to the waist, was bending blind with hot water and soap-over a smoking tub, and while David's mother applied the scrubbing-brush or the flannels to his shoulders.

To-day, however, with an utter freedom from his usual timidity, David strode in, and looked hungrily at the teatable.

The Overman was taking a rest after his own peculiar fashion, standing with his hands clasped at the back of his neck, and his figure drawn up and thrown a little forward on the toes.

As David on entering had thrown the door wide open, the room was flooded with the light of the March sun, that was just then sinking behind the almost perpendicular wall of fir-trees, shaking their ethereal new-born tassels

down the hill-side, across the valley, and making all around look dark or dull by their vividness.

David went at once to examine the tea-table without having noticed his father. Pleased with what he saw there, he looked up with a bright, appreciative smile at his mother, who was touching the cups on the tray. With a most unusual obliviousness she turned, and began to seek for something on a high shelf with one hand, while she held the other against her side.

A sad, patient, stricken-looking creature she was. Calamity did not so much seem to have smitten her by heavy but occasional blows, as to have kept on her one continual cruel unrelaxing pressure, squeezing her very heart's blood out of her, and leaving reaction impossible.

You could see as she looked on her husband's and son's faces, and as she moved away to put the tea before them, that there was no spring or vital impulse of kind left in her. She could not even complain. She could only bear in a kind of dull way her life of suffering.

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Still a sharp observer might have noticed a difference in the looks she gave to Israel and to the boy. To the one it was a glance of perfectly drilled obedience—that ever waited but to know what was desired from it—without the faintest suggestion of hope or desire that she might give him or herself pleasure from the fulfilment of his wishes. To the other it was at once a glance of tender love and earnest fear, but both shadowed and weakened by the sense of utter helplessness.

Noticing her peculiar behaviour, and seeing that his father was making no preparations for his bath, and must therefore be going back to the pit with the night-shift of miners, David began to think something had happened there an accident, a death, perhaps.

The blood rushed to his cheeks, which still tingled from the cutting March wind; and he turned to his father in silent, humble inquiry.

Israel Mort stood just in the stream of light the open door admitted. He was still clasping his hands behind his neck and standing raised on his toes, as if the luxury of

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