thin lad, came forward with leaps and gambols, in spite of his weakness, and fell almost at Tressady's feet. As he recognized the tall man standing above him, his bloodless mouth twitched into a broad grin:

«I say, give us a chance. Take me out, won't you?»

It was Mary Batchelor's grandson. In retribution for the assault on Letty, the lad had been sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment, and George had not seen him since. He stooped now, and poured some brandy down the boy's throat. «We'll get you out directly," he said, «as soon as we've looked to the others.>>

"There's some on 'em not worth takin' out,» said the boy, clinging to George's leg. «They 're dead. Take me out first.» Then, with another grin, as George disengaged himself, «Some on 'em 's prayin'.»

Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects of after-damp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little prayermeeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth.

A little distance from the prayer-meeting the skeptics of the party leaned against the wall or lay along the floor unheeding, while seven men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows, meanwhile, who had been least touched by the after-damp, had amused themselves,» as they said, by riding up and down the neighboring level on the « jummer," or coal-truck, of one of them. "Were n't you afraid?» Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off.

«Noa,» said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. «Noa; theer was company. Old Moses there, 'ee saved us.» Old Moses was the leader of the prayermeeting. He was a fireman, besides, who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the flame in its caprice had

passed him by, and he and another man had been able to struggle through the after-damp back along the heading just in time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out.»> But Moses was able to control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and they could wait for rescue.

George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to Tressady's arm than he called to Madan:

«Mr. Madan, sir!» «Ay, Moses.»>

"Have ye heard ought of them in the West Heading yet?»

«No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next.»

«I left thirty men and boys there this morning at half-past six. It was fair thronged up with them.» The old man's voice shook.

Meanwhile, Madan and the doctors were busy with the transport of the seven unconscious men, some of whom were already dying. Each of them had to be carried on his back by two men, and as soon as the sick procession was organized, it was seen that only three of the search-party were left free-Tressady, Burrows, and the Scotch fireman, Macdonald.

Up the level and along the heading, past the point where Dixon was still at work, over the minor falls that everywhere attested the range of the explosion, and through the pools of water that here and there gathered the drippings of the mine, the seven men were tenderly dragged or carried, till at last the party regained the main intake or roadway. George turned to Madan:

«You will have your hands full with these poor fellows. Macdonald and I-Mr. Burrows, if he likes-will push on to the West Heading.» Madan looked uneasy.

«You'd better go up, Sir George," he said in a low voice, «and let me go on. You don't know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, sir, as quick as you can.»

"Why should you risk more than I?» said George, quietly. «Stop! what time is it? » He looked at his watch. Five o'clock-nearly nine hours since they descended! He might

have guessed it at three, if he had been asked. Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin's point. But the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him.

«Send word at once to Lady Tressady,» he said in Madan's ear, drawing the manager to one side. «Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the other men a safe as these.»>

Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry biscuits; of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or two locked doors farther up the workings.

<< Macdonald, you'll come? >>
«Ay, Sir George.>>
«You, Mr. Burrows?»

"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head.

Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader with their sunken eyes; others took no notice. His prestige had been lost in defeat, and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No doubt this rescue-party had presented itself to the agent as an opening he dare not neglect.

«Come on, then,» said George; and the three men turned back toward the interior of the pit.

Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short and looked after them. Then he raised a hoarse voice: «Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?»

"Yes,» George flung back over his shoulder, already far away.

«The Lord go with yer, Sir George!»

No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his stronger comrades, and tottered on toward the shaft. Two or three of his fellows gathered round him. «Ay,» said one of them, out of Madan's hearing; «'ee 's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, 'ee 'ave, but 'ee 's a plucky lot, is the boss."

«They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday,» said another, hoarsely. «Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me.»>

The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, made no reply; and the movement of old Moses's lips, as he staggered forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, showed that he was praying.

MEANWHILE, George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macdonald trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp. Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was «fiery.» No naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all «shots,» or charges for loosening the coal, were electrically fired.

As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the disaster, whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of miner-disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between the risk of bringing the coal roof down on his head for lack of a proper light to work by, and the risk of «being blown to hell » by the opening of his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people, that they should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. «Try it yourself, my fine gentleman »- that was what the expression of them meant.

«He does n't only risk his own life,» said George, shortly. «That's the answer. I say, Macdonald, is n't this the door to the Meadows Pit? If anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we could n't get round yet by the return, we might have to try it, might n't we?»

Macdonald assented, and George as he passed stepped up to the heavy wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of opening it in case of need.

The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backward and forward to make the key bite.

Meanwhile, Macdonald had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door, a cracking noise was heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway:

«Run, Sir George! Run!»

A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the pit-head, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, thinking it was another explosion.

HOURS passed. At last in George's numbed brain there was a faint stir of consciousness; he opened his eyes slowly.

Oh, horror! Oh, cruelty! To come back from merciful nothingness and peace to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. I had died,» he thought; «it was done with.>> And a wild, impotent rage, as against some brutality done him, surged through him. A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man bent over him in the darkness, and felt for his pulse.

«Burrows! The whisper was just percep

tible.

«Yes, Sir George.»>

"What has happened? Where is Macdonald? Give me some brandy; there, in my inner pocket.>>

«No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, but your mouth was set; it ran down my fingers.»

«Give it me.»

Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a groan of anguish broke from him.

<< Drink it if you possibly can.>> George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few drops. Still the anguish! «O God, my back! And the legsparalyzed!»

The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the brandy began to sting.

He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his right leg. The trousers round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments lying on the flesh were caked and hard, and beneath him was a pool. His reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the thigh,» he thought; «much bleeding; probably the bleeding has dulled the worst pain. The back and shoulders burned->>

Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon it were also caked and wet. He let his hand drop. «How long have I » he thought. For already his revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, threatening to drown it like a flood.

--

« Burrows!»-he felt again with his hand «where 's Macdonald? »

A sob broke from the darkness beside him: «Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?»

"It was such a bad fall?»

«The whole mine seemed to come down.»> George felt the shudder of the huge frame. «I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macdonald was right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides.>>

<< Macdonald's lamp? Broken?» whispered George, after a pause.

«Possibly. It could n't have been much or we should have been killed instantly. I was only stunned-a bit scorched, too-not badly. You're the lucky one. I shall die by inches.>> «Cheer up!» said George, faintly. << I can't last, but they'll find you.>>

"What chance for either of us?» said Burrows, groaning. «The return must be blocked, too, or they'd have got round to us by now.»

« How long? >>

«God knows! To judge by the time I've been sitting-since I got you here-it's night long ago.»

«Since you got me here?» repeated George, with feeble interrogation.

<< When I came to, I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and I suppose the after-damp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit till I felt some brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; then I felt your heart. And since we got here, I've found an air-pipe up here along the wall, and broken it.»>

George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud noise disturbed himtortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was-a slow drip or trickle of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that enwrapped them-silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been delving at her heart.

« Burrows! that water-maddens me!» He moved his head miserably. «Could you get some? The brandy flask has a cup.»

«There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, and dashed it over you. I'll go again.»>

George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow.

He drank greedily.

<<Thanks! Put it by me-there; that 's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave me. You can't do anything-and you-you might still try for it. There are one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could explain->

But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had to put his ear close to the scorched lips.

"No," he said gloomily; «I don't leave a man while there 's any life in him. Besides, there's no chance; I don't know the mine.»

Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such agony rose in George, it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor Letty! his child that was to be! His own energy of life, he had been so conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death, all gone, all done! His little moment of being torn from him by the inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing!

A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in a shop-window, had seen and pondered over. «Entombed >> was written underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and brain, for this!

Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness, he saw it-the lifted arms, the bare torso of the man writhing under the agony of realization, the tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped forever from the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, even amid the gaiety of a Paris street.

Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked into the engine-house. There she was, his poor Letty! O God! He tried to get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible!

A sound disturbed his dream.

His ear and brain struggled with it, trying to give it a name. A man's long, painful breaths-half sobs. Burrows, no doubt thinking of the woman he loved-of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending in the cottage garden on that April day. He put out his hand, and touched his companion.

«Don't despair,» he whispered; «you will see her again. How strange! we two-we enemies; but this is the end. Tell me about her.>>

«I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child,» said the hoarse voice, after a pause. «She was happy-in spite of the drink, in spite of everything; she would have been happy till she died. To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, I made up.»

«You will see her again,» George repeated, but hardly knowing what the words were he said.

When he next spoke, it was with an added strength that astonished his companion. << Burrows, promise me something. Take a message from me to my wife. Come nearer.» Then, as he felt his companion's breath on his cheek, he roused himself to speak plainly:

«Tell her I sent her my dear love; that I thanked her with all my heart and soul for her love; that it was very hard to leave her -and our child. Write the words for her, Burrows. Tell her it was impossible for me to write, but I dictated this.» He paused for a long time, then resumed: «And tell her, too, my last wish was-that she should ask Lord and Lady Maxwell-can you hear plainly?»-he repeated the names-«to be her friends and guardians. And bid her ask them, from me, not to forsake her. Have you understood? Will you repeat it?»

Burrows, in the mood of one humoring the whim of the dying, repeated what had been said to him word by word, his own sensuous nature swept the while by the terrors of a death which seemed but one little step farther from himself than from Tressady. Yet he did his best to understand and recollect; and to the message so printed on his shrinking brain a woman's misery owed its only comfort in the days that followed.

<<Thank you,» said Tressady, painfully listening for the last word. «Give me your hand. Good-by. You and I-the world's a queer place; I wish I'd turned you back at the pit's mouth. I wanted to show I bore no malice. Well, at least I know->>

The words broke off incoherently. Burrows caught the word "suffering,» and some phrase about the men»; then Tressady's head slipped back against the wall, and he spoke no more.

But the mind was active long afterward. Again and again he seemed to himself standing in a bright light, alive and free. Innumerable illusions played about him. In one of the most persistent, he was climbing the slope of a Swiss meadow in May. Oh! the scent of

the narcissus, heavy still with the morning dew; the brush of the wet grass against his ankles; those yellow anemones shining there beneath the pines; the roar of the river in the gorge below; and beyond, far above, the gray peak, sharp and tall against that unmatched brilliance of the blue! In another, he was riding alone in a gorge aflame with rhododendrons, and far down in the plainthe burnt-up Indian plain-some great fortified town, grave on its hilltop, broke the level lines- a rose-red city, half as old as time.» Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and tints which the breeze-oh, the freshness of it!-was painting each moment anew at its caprice-painting and blotting, over and over again, as the water swung under the ship.

But all through these freaks of memory some strange thing seemed to have happened to him. He carried something in his armson his breast. The anguish of his inner pity for Letty, piercing through all else, expressed itself so.

But sometimes, as the brain grew momentarily clearer, he would wonder, almost in his old cynical way, at his own pity. She seemed to have come to love him; but was it not altogether for her good that his flawed, contradictory life should be cut violently from hers? Could their marriage, ill-planted, ill-grown, have come in the end to any tolerable fruit? His mind passed back with bitterness over the nine months of it-not bitterness toward her; he seemed to be talking to her all the time as she lay hidden on his shoulder; bitterness toward himself, toward the futility of his own life and efforts and desires.

But why his more than any other? The futility, the insignificance of all that man desires, all that waits on him-that old selfscorn which began with the race-tormented him none the less in dying for the myriads it had haunted so before. An image of human fate which had struck him in some book recurred to him now-an image of daisied grass, alive one moment in the evening light; a quivering world of blades and dew, insects and petals; a forest of innumerable lines, crossed by the innumerable movements of living things; the next withdrawn into the night, all silenced, all effaced.

So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own

pain never ceased. The only eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! It was as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death, his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world as a spent swimmer sinks into the wave.

One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain this piteous submission brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and compunctionsthese things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George Tressady, a man of no professions and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his share and done his part.

Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way? Once, nearly at the last, he opened his eyes with a start.

« What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that supports that reconciles. If-if-how little would it all matter! Oh! what is this that knows the road I came: the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame-the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!» His dying thought clung to words long familiar as that of other men might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of something ineffable.

And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came toward him. Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. «Is it so bad, my friend? Have courage; the end is near.» «Care for her-and keep me, too, in your heart,» he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light-blinding, featureless light-poured over the vision, and George Tressady had ceased to live.

Mary A. Ward.

VOL. LII.-120.