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to listen, and to let me come down again to see what chances there yet remain for lending him a helping hand. Of course, he will have to make great sacrifices as to his own position, and perhaps even lose all right of property in it; but I hope better things, and I am now going to

see.

' And you will have to go down into the mine!' ejaculated Nest, shrinking back in unutterable horror. 'Go down to that fearful place?'

And if I were a soldier, and my commanding officer told me to march as one of a forlorn hope to storm a citadel, what would you have me do?'

David, as he said this, gazed into Nest's face as if his every hope of happiness here or hereafter were bound up in her reply.

Nest saw that look, and felt, as she supposed, all that was involved in it, so answered only with her tears for a minute or two; then she timidly crept to him, and pressed her heart against his breast, and murmured

'Yes, yes, you must go.'

'Do you say so?' David asked, as if in a kind of dreamy wonder.

his.

'Yes,' sighed Nest, and placing her trembling hand in

She felt his trembling in reply; but it only deepened her sense of sympathy with him, for she thought his secret trouble meant sympathy with and for her.

Some instinct told David this, and made him shrink back from her, and presently cry out in words that seemed full of the most bitter anguish and self-reproach

6

Nest, do not be deceived! you think me brave, heroic; that I am struggling simply to conceal from you the suffering my fear for you inspires! It is untrue, false! I am but a living lie!'

'Oh, David, David, what mean you?'

'That I am one of the rankest of cowards, even while pushed on by a cursed fate into the most cruel of positions, where I dare not show the most ordinary natural manifestation of what even strong men feel, lest I should

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break down at once and stand ashamed before a scornful and contemptuous world.'

'Oh, David, David, dearest, this is not, cannot be true! Do you not see it cannot? Did you not lately go through all the most dangerous parts of the mine, sleep there, do your work so well that even my father has heard of you, and spoken words of admiration of the young fellow Israel had found to help him?'

'Did he do that?'

'Yes.'

6 Nest, you comfort me, even while I feel that the new alarm I have given you is itself a proof how ill things are with me here;' and David put his hand to his breast. 'David, I entreat you to listen to me. The pain you have to bear, I see and understand too well. And if I also must henceforth bear it, do you think so little of my love as to suppose I would evade it if I could? Oh, no! a thousand times no! For your sake, I do wish with all my heart and soul this thing were not so; but if you are thus marked out, selected from the herd of men for the accomplishment of this work, what can I think, feel, or say, but that just in proportion to the excess of pain and difficulty you individually find in it, is the value and glory of every conquest you achieve, and my pride and joy and exultation to stand by and wait and watch for the results?'

be

6

And you have no fear that—that the results may

None, David, none.'

'Nest,' said David, after a long pause of passionate and wistful gazing into her eyes, I will strive to tell you some other time all I have suffered in this way; for I feel that thus and thus alone, in communion with you, shall I entirely master these unworthy emotions, if they ever are to be mastered.'

'Oh they will be-shall be!' exclaimed Nest, her face radiant with spiritual light and gladness that seemed to fill the dark little shed.

Y

And if so, you will be my deliverer in the future as you have already been in the past. Let us go forth.' When David had helped Nest though the narrow and low aperture, he said to her, with quite a new serenity in his look

'Pluck me a flower, Nest.'

She stooped, and did as she was bid, and he placed the flower carefully within his breast. Then he also stooped and plucked one to give to her, as he said—

"When I meet you again--for my heart tells me we shall meet, that my prayers have already been answeredif I show you the flower you have now given me, this your precious gift, which now lies upon my heart, you will know it has not been dishonoured; but if I do not show it to you'

'What then?' said Nest, softly and gravely.

'Then demand it of me, that I may stand shamed before you and before God. Oh, Nest, pray for me that I pass through the ordeal as I ought. Fortify me, strengthen me, my own darling! for I could not live to ask you to be my wife were my past gloomy fears of myself to be realised.'

It was Nest's turn now to hesitate, to fear, to suggest doubt, as the thought occurred to her she might never see him more.

6

'David,' she said, anxiously, you will not needlessly rush into danger, for my sake you will not do that? Oh, David, I begin to wish you had not undertaken this work. If you doubt yourself, you do but after all what many of the noblest and bravest men would also do. The danger is not the kind of danger for spirits like yours to contend with. God shapes the man to the work. For rough labours, rough tools. Let others'

'Do my duty? No. Farewell! If with your love to think of as my recompense, an earthly father to be won, and a heavenly Father to watch over me—and see how I try, in my humble human fashion, to repay Him for His unceasing bounty to me—if these things fail, it matters little what else may succeed. Nest, dearest, my own, one kiss, and then let me go.'

All Nest's firmness, all her brightness, all her sweet confidence had died away, as David folded her in his arms, kissed her pale face and quivering lips passionately, many times, then seated her on the trunk of a tree, and not daring to trust himself with another word or look, hurried away.

CHAPTER XLII.

ANOTHER EXPLOSION.

Ir the enthusiasm we feel in moments of intense spiritual elevation would but last, what a world might we not make of this? What lives might we not lead?

Some such question Nest asked of herself, as she found hour by hour all the glow of her meeting with David die out, and leave only darkness behind.

As Nest lay restless on her bed that night she troubled herself ceaselessly with two questions:

Had she done right to let her lover go to dangers so great, and to which he was so unaccustomed? What if his own instinct, that warned him so strongly away from such undertakings, had been the true one, after all, by which he ought to have been guided?

She pictured him to herself as already in the mine; and seemed to see into his very soul, and to watch the fearful struggle going on there-David, half paralysed by fear, yet maintaining a firm outward aspect; longing to be back again upon the firm safe earth outside, yet irresistibly impelled to pursue the search begun, even after others might be willing to stop; thinking of himself, of his want of faith in himself, and of his father's want of faith in him; while perceiving in intensest anguish, rather than in any hopefulness of soul, how he might now perhaps scatter all such craven thoughts and ignoble fears like so many dead leaves to the winds, and feel they were indeed gone for ever.

She made herself so wretched by this kind of mental exercise, that she was at last constrained to get up and go to the window to look in the direction of the mine.

She knew very well she could not see it from that place, even in the daylight, but still she felt a kind of relief in letting her eyes rest in that direction. There was a slight mist, but the moon shone through the mist, and the light fell on a moving form in the garden below. She wondered, as all the family was supposed to be in bed; she followed the figure with her glance till she thought she recognised the clumsy gait of Jenkyn the farm-servant.

He drew nearer, and must, she thought, see her at the window; but he made no sign of recognition till she raised the sash to speak; when his hurried gesture warned her against making any noise.

He came and stood close under the window, bringing with him a short ladder that the gardener had been using to pick the ripened fruit. Up this he mounted till he could whisper to her as she leaned down:

'Letter, Miss-please don't tell master, or I'd lose my place.'

'Don't fear!' she murmured in reply, taking the letter from him, and immediately closing her window, relighting her candle, and beginning to read.

Has he,' she thought, while pausing a moment in suspense, with the letter in her trembling fingers—“ has he been thinking as I did, and resolved, wisely, not to tempt Providence? Oh, if he has, what a blessed relief! But how much I shall have to do to satisfy him with himself! Dear, dear David!'

This was the letter

'Dearest,-Perhaps if I could stand by you, my presence unsuspected, while you read this, I might, as I saw the relief ["relief!" murmured Nest, "how strange! the very word that was on my lips!" Then she again read the passage]-as I saw the relief my note gave, feel you knew me better than I knew myself, when you warned me to desist, and be anything but flattered by all that was involved in such a conclusion.

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