frightened often at the thought of him-so good, so fit only to live in heaven-that perhaps now he is angry I didn't have more faith that he was alive and would never

be taken from me. Come, stoop down and listen. Oh, do ask him what he says, I entreat you!'

The man stooped, more to please and quiet her than from any expectation to hear the voice of her lost husband; then shook his head, and said again to her—

If you heard anything, it was only the echo of your own call.'

This so excited her that she burst into transports of grief and anger, and in answer to her passionate appeals they all shouted. She again listened, and brought others to listen, and at last, to their astonishment, there was borne up towards them the sound of a man's feeble voice.

By slow degrees they managed to discover that he had by a variety of means contrived to raise himself to a considerable height in the shaft through the débris that, to a certain extent, blocked it.

They lowered to him a can with some drink, and then, when they again heard him, he was singing a verse from a well-known hymn:

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,

And cast a wistful eye

To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.

By this time a basket had been got ready. This was lowered, and in a few minutes the collier thus wonderfully rescued emerged to the surface, and the first sight of him was enough for the poor woman who waited and watched in the most absolute faith it was her husband. A maniacal cry rang through the air, and then some of the pitying women led her home.

This was the story told to Israel-who again listened for the woman's singing. He managed with the doctor's help to get to the window. He could not yet see her, but he heard her, and it seemed she was approaching. The voice was strangely sweet and pure. It was silent again

for a moment or two, then rang out more clear and piercing than ever. The air, the words, the voice, seemed to make together something that was more like the soul-burden of some prodigal angel returning to the great Father of all, than the mere voice of wandering humanity, seeking to regain its home:

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye

To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.

The singer now emerged from the lane by which she was approaching Israel, and he saw, just as he had been for some minutes expecting he should see, and to his profound grief, the mad wife of his friend and deliverer, Margaret Thomas.

The doctor and he exchanged significant glances. Margaret did not, however, look miserable. Faith seemed to have lived in her, while all other intellectual qualities had for the moment died, and to have filled her with a kind of joyous light.

Israel was in no mood to try to speak to her just then, but he watched her as she passed along, till the last sweep of her garments in the wind as she turned a corner sent him back to his couch, to ask himself whether he was in any way responsible for this new and yet unknown misery for his benefactor.

CHAPTER XLI.

AT THE CRAIG LEVEL.

THE second day after the explosion, while Nest still felt the sudden terror inspired by it, and by the knowledge of the danger experienced by David's father, she had a new and trying chapter of life opened to her, which enhanced a thousandfold all the terrors of the accident.

Her father, Griffith Williams, was well known to be a kind man, and, by everybody but Israel Mort, acknowledged to be a just man; but the explosion, instead of softening his animosity towards Israel, seemed to deepen it; so that he could not but exult in the proof thus afforded of the punishment that sooner or later always overtakes the wicked.

It was not so he said the sharp, costly, harassing litigation he had been subjected to by Israel's freaks, still less was it the original insult attending the sale of the mine-no, it was none of these things that moved him now, as he repeatedly assured his ever-sympathetic but not very clear-minded wife; but the villany of Israel's conduct in carrying on the mine all these years without making any one of the great remedial alterations that he had sworn to be necessary twelve years ago, when the money was to come out of his-Griffith Williams's-pocket.

The Squire was too hopelessly prejudiced to consider that Israel's default in that respect might be due to the failure to obtain the requisite capital.

But for this language, which Nest heard incessantly repeated, she would have obeyed the natural yearning of her heart, have gone to Israel's house, and begged permission to wait on him in his illness. How sweet that would have been to David, when he should know; and what a relief to her overcharged heart in the meantime !

On this particular day she had excused herself from the dinner table on the plea of headache. But that evil she might have borne: what she could not bear was the constant exhibition of uncharitableness on the part of a father so dear to her, and whom she had always felt to be so worthy of honour, and against one whom she already recognised in her heart as a second parent.

For with the simple faith and hopeful imaginativeness of maidenhood, Nest saw in the distance David and his father fully reconciled; and that necessarily included for her all possible goodness on Israel's part-all possible happiness for both families when the ultimate union of both should be accomplished.

Thinking thus, she wandered out into the garden, and felt soothed by the songs of the birds, the murmur of the wild stream, and forgot for a brief space the mine and all the melancholy associations that it aroused.

As she mused, and raised and let fall with her foot a pretty tangle of flowers that had passed over the edge of a flower-bed raised upon some natural rocks, something glanced rapidly before her eyes and fell upon her lap.

It was a paper wrapped round a stone, which had been thrown from outside the boundary wall.

She rose and glanced round; then, at the thought of David, and fear of her father's anger against him, if he should observe the incident, sat down again to unwind and read the paper :

I am here and want urgently to see you. Can you accept from me the full sense of this necessity, and come to the Craig Level without a moment's delay?'

'Craig Level' was the name given to one of the wildest spots of the mountain, on account of the entrance there into an old and abandoned mine. It was one of those pits which lie so high within the mountain slopes that a 'level' gallery cut into one of them suffices for the winning of coal without a shaft.

Close by was a vast cinder heap, that seemed as if it had bodily squatted down in a homogeneous mass upon and right across the lovely wild stream, which was therefore obliged to make way as well as it could round the black mound.

Nothing could be more complete than the contrast between the hideous pile of man's making and the exquisite scenery around, including the wild stream, the high, waving, graceful bushes, and slender silvery birch trees along its banks, the undulations of the green surface as it stretched away upwards to the mountain peak, the lowly wild flowers, and the yellow gorse still in full bloom.

The wild stream itself, as if utterly unconscious of the outrage it suffered from, encircled the cinder heap as

lovingly as if it were one of the fairest objects in creation, and became to it as a necklace, where shade and brightness alternated in rapid succession with the play of light on the moving water, like so many links in a diamond chain.

There David walked to and fro in a state of such absorbed, yet profound mental agitation, that at last he became conscious of his folly, and how it was unfitting him for the interview he had sought.

He must go forth, to see if Nest were coming.

He did so, but his agitation seemed to increase, as he saw her garments fluttering in the wind afar off.

Thinking she might not have seen him, he went back to his seat, hoping to calm the increasing tremor of his nerves, and bitterly reproaching himself the while for his

weakness.

There in the shed Nest found him, his fingers clammy with cold and perspiration, his face pale and distorted with passion, and covered with a kind of bead-like dew.

'Come in,' he said, before even he saw her.

6

Nest hesitated a moment, and looked as if doubting the propriety of his bidding, then went in, with a smile of sweet confidence, and was clasped in her lover's arms. Nest, dearest,' he said after a pause, during which he seemed to be steadying his voice and manner, thank you for this sweet confidence; believe me, it shall not be abused.'

6

You know,' he continued, "I went to London to report on the mine-and I may tell you now it was to report favourably. But first there was delay. Men of business are mostly cautious, and fancy they often secure safety by virtue of being slow. My father was therefore left in suspense and I in misery, that I could not write to him.

At last they declined. I then determined to go elsewhere, and see if I could not succeed better for him. I was fortunate; a capitalist was ready. But last night the fearful news of the explosion reached us. The first feeling of my new agents was to have done with the mine at once, and forbid all further negotiations. But I induced them