He touches one of these, and there is a groan. He stoops, moistens the lips of the senseless man with tea; the man revives, and, half unconsciously, faintly appeals to him for help. He is one of the carpenters. Rees Thomas grasps him, lifts him with a more than mortal strength, and moves away. Suddenly his strength is shaken. He hears a far-off voice calling. It is Israel's, he is sure of it, he would give the world to be able to put this man down and go back, but he cannot; no, before God he feels he must not! A new danger affects him. His way is barred. A fall of earth has taken place, and shut them in as in a trap. He stoops, and bending over the man he has been carrying, prays just for one minute to his Maker, in language and thought such as only these moments can inspire: then rises with new hope and fortitude. How wonderfully now he is served by his old knowledge of the mine! He remembers another route by which to pass from this level to the bottom of the shaft. It is a great comfort to him to find the mine as free from gas as it is. The repeated explosions, driving the air to the shaft, and so up to the surface, had been naturally followed by a great downward flow of pure air to fill the vacancy; carrying back with it into the innermost recesses the deadly choke damp, and leaving the approaches comparatively free. Again he lifts his burden, and moves on. He passes, as he expected he should, Israel; and he hears the latter in a faint, hoarse voice cry for assistance, though what it says he cannot discover, nor stop to investigate. But the lamp-light shows his face; Israel knows him, and the sight seemed to bring back into him new life. 'Ha! Rees Thomas !' Israel, I will come back;' such were the words on Rees Thomas's lips, but the burden he bore was suddenly obliged to be shifted to pass under some new obstacle, and he had the inexpressible anguish to feel that Israel had not heard, and might die in the belief of his neglect of him. After superhuman efforts he reached the bottom of the shaft, where the air helped to revive the saved man; and then, without a moment's delay, other than sufficed to drink a few drops from his precious can of tea, Rees Thomas sped as swiftly back as the fearful nature of the way permitted. A dreadful question tormented this tender-conscienced man as he went. If another victim interposed for help before Israel, ought he, or not, to save him first? He could not answer it quite to his own satisfaction; but he determined he would take the responsibility before God and man of saving only Israel, if one more only was to be saved through his means. He found, when he got to the place where Israel lay, three other bodies near him. It was a dreadful business, the groping about to see their faces, and try to recognise them, as he was obliged to do, for he could not for the moment tell which was the man he sought. Lusty, the Overman, was one of the three. He had crawled back to the place where he left Israel, and there died. Another of the three was a repairer. dead. The third was the man he sought. He also was Israel had turned on his face and fainted, when his last hope expired with the departure of the Deputy. But there he was, and, to Rees Thomas's boundless relief, still living. He felt the heart beat, he felt the slow but still warm breath on his own cheek, when he knelt. 'Israel Israel Mort! with thee, who will not Dost thou hear?' Be of good cheer. 'A friend!' Very faint was the utterance of the words, and dubious in their expression. 'Ay, one whom thou hast yet to know-the Friend of all mankind. He it is who sends me here. Drink! Drink!' Israel's burnt and feverish lips clung unconsciously to the can, as the lips of a famished babe will cling to its mother's breast, when nourishment comes at last. 6 'Better? You are better?' Ay.' Then with strange wonder in his eyes, he gasped out, Rees Thomas? Thee!' 6 "Ay, God be praised! But be silent now. Now then!' He took Israel across his lap, looking down upon him for one moment as he did so with a look of love, devotion, and heroic purpose, that Israel was too ill to catch more than the faintest reflection of, but even that sufficed to confound him utterly. He closed his eyes with the words'God help me! What manner of man is this?' Then Rees Thomas found he was once more bearing along a senseless burden, knowing not whether to life or to death. CHAPTER XXXIX. A CHARACTER IN REVOLUTION. CAN character be changed suddenly—in a space of time so brief, that a man can say, 'Thus I was up to a certain time-thus I am since that time passed over me?' Or, in other words, what is this but to ask-Can the current of a man's daily and worldly life, fed as it is from innumerable sources of his past career-of his individual desires and aims-of his peculiar experiences, temptations, errors, truths, ignorances, knowledge—of his fierce battles against his fellows, while sympathising with them in their traditional belief in the necessity of maintaining all those things that injure or destroy other and nobler kinds of sympathy;-can all these powers and influences be at once not largely modified only, but absolutely changed in their essential nature; reversed; just as if a strongly flowing river, with his tributaries, were to turn, as by its own volition, and go back the way it came, in search of some newer and nobler channel through which alone it would henceforward pass? Could such a question have been put to Israel Mort a few minutes before his eventful midnight visit with his assistant to the mine, he would probably have wondered for a brief space at the strangeness of it-have asked himself whether any influences could so change himhave smiled at the absurdity, and then forgotten it. And yet even now, as Rees Thomas bears him along in arms that tremble with their too great burden, yet cling to it as if with the instinct of the possession of some new and most invaluable treasure-something which, if only it can be saved and borne to the upper world, and to the freshness and glory of day, shall make the Deputy's own life more precious in his own eyes-while Israel is thus being borne back towards the shaft, from which faint glimmerings of light now begin to reach them, and illumine their way, his whole being is in a state of revolution, however little conscious he may be of the fact. The inevitable slowness of the Deputy's movements causes much time to pass, which in itself tends to Israel's recovery. He has frequently to be put down and taken up again, in order to pass over, under, or circuitously by the difficulties of the way. On one of these occasions, Rees Thomas has felt uncertain as to his route, and gone away a few steps to explore closer. Returning, he found, to his astonishment, Israel sitting up with his back against a mass of fallen rock. The Deputy held his lamp to Israel's face; and the illumination cast there by the dim light was as nothing to the inner radiance that almost transfigured the firescarred, storm-beaten face of the Deputy as he met Israel's faint smile, and listened to the half-inarticulate words, slowly and laboriously uttered I thought you had left me to my fate.' 'I shall never leave you till I have placed you in His hands whose servant I am, and whose service will yet be yours. Come!' Israel gazed on the Deputy's features with all the wonder and earnestness that were possible to him under his physical state-gazed as if this were a problem he must master at any cost, and yet could not; then shut his eyes, strove to rise, but was unable to lift his weight; then again knew no more till a few minutes later he found himself near the sump, or water-pit, looking up through the shaft wistfully to the faint light at the top. Glancing round for the Deputy, he saw him coming towards him with a pitcher of water. Israel drank from it, drank again and again, and was wonderfully refreshed; and would have gone on drinking while a drop remained in the vessel, but the Deputy took it from him with gentle force, and dashed the remainder in his face. Israel gasped for a moment between his anger and the shock, but presently found himself so much strengthened, that he was able, with the Deputy's assistance, to stand upright; though he trembled like one who leaves his bed for the first time after weeks of an exhausting and dangerous illness, and he knew he should utterly collapse and fall if Rees Thomas's arms were but for a moment withdrawn. Could you, do you think, sit astride the bar I had rigged up to descend with, you being on one side the rope, and I the other?' "Yes,' feebly responded Israel, if ——' 'I know; if I hold you. Of course I shall hold you.' Then he led him towards where the rope hung, and which was quivering with the latest of the many anxious signals of enquiry passed from above; and after a minute or two Israel was not only safely seated on the crossbar, and his hands clenching the rope, but had a rope so securely lashed round his waist and shoulders, that even if he again became insensible, he might be borne safely up to the surface. The Deputy now took his own seat, blew a shrill piercing note on the whistle that hung round Israel's neck, shook the rope above their heads as well as he could, while he and Israel lessened the tension by supporting |