'However, this is not what I have to say; and I almost think I ought not to have written the preceding sentences, but have confined myself to the subject in hand.

'Two circumstances, then, have occurred, which I think it but right you should at once know. The first is, that I find an agent—a scientific man, and a man of great practical knowledge-therefore of infinitely greater value than I could be, has come from the Penman Coed Colliery to take the command of the men I proposed to lead; and simultaneously I am recalled by an imperative order to London, which means, I fear, another break-down of the negotiation for capital.

I shall, however, bate no jot of heart or hope in struggling for him, and you will doubtless hear from or see me before many days have passed.

Till then, dearest, believe the best you can of your unhappy, perhaps unworthy lover.

'From the little shed at the Craig Level.

'P.S.-It is intentionally I avoid names, not knowing into what hands accident might place this.'

'He is gone then!' cried Nest, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, that yet were full of happy light. He is out of danger, and not discredited. Oh, thank Heaven! This is indeed a great, a blessed relief!'

CHAPTER XLIII.

ISRAEL'S LIFE THEORY TESTED.

It was all the doctor could do to keep Israel to his couch for the days of rest he had consented to give; and it was more than he could do to keep him from attending to business during them.

Israel not only disobeyed and rebelled against the doctor, but managed to make him a partner in a conspiracy against himself.

'Some letters must be written. you, while my fingers are in this state. have it over soon, and then I'll be your

There's nobody but

for the whole neighbourhood afterwards.'

We'll

Sit down. Sit down. model of patience

The doctor shrugged up his shoulders, but sat down, and played the part of amanuensis to his patient.

Wisely thinking it best to be himself the first to communicate the bad tidings, Israel had written immediately to Mr. Knight in London that letter which brought David so hurriedly down.

Now he made the doctor indite seven or eight urgent appeals to brother colliery owners living within some twenty miles round, all asking for farther help in his extremity. He wanted money for the injured people, who were poor, and which the doctor was to receive and distribute; he wanted superior men-agents, viewers, or managers, to come and see the mine and give counsel; he wanted a score or two of hardy, brave colliers, who were not, like his own, demoralised by the accident; and to whom he undertook to pay for the time extra wages, and allowances for special expenses. He explained that these men were wanted to take the place of the first band of explorers in case of need.

When this was done, Israel's feverish mind calmed; and he promised the doctor, who claimed an extra day's rest for his patient by way of reward for his double labours, that he would now be quiet for a little, on receiving the doctor's assurance that Israel's own people were on the watch to do what ought to be done.

Never was rest more bitter and less wholesome to a man, in spite of the great need he had for it, than this which Israel experienced after the doctor left.

There he lay, and opposite to him the sleeping Deputy; happily as yet unconscious of the new calamity -his wife's state, the consequences of which, indeed, Israel hardly dared to think of.

It is, however, one of the inevitable conditions of mining life that the shock experienced by the survivors from such calamities finds them prepared to bear while the immediate effect lasts, and prepared to forget the moment forgetfulness becomes possible.

As to Israel, he had perhaps never known before what such a shock meant. When mine accidents happened he had been sorry, had rendered his due share of help, listened with patience to scorched men and to weeping women; done, in fact, all he was expected to do, so long as he was not asked to give money-which he never did—or to display emotion which it was not in his nature to feel-and so through long years had be been.

But now he felt as if all the terrible arrears of heartfelt sympathy, due to the many unfortunates he had known, were coming down upon him in one fell swoop, concentrated in the person of the Deputy.

At times he wished he had never seen him. Then he wished he had not so often stopped his mouth when he wanted to talk on matters deeply interesting to him, but that seemed, at the time, to Israel like feeding on husks and chaff. He would like now to have heard all Rees Thomas had wanted to say, so that he might weigh it over and over, in these moments of forced leisure and gloom.

Then he tried to speculate on the motives of the man. Somehow, Israel, in all his past life, had never failed to satisfy himself about the characters and views of those with whom he was thrown into contact.

His plan had been simple.

First, he had laid down one broad, clear theory, that reduced all things to a kind of order, to begin with. Every man's first object is to take care of himself. That was Israel's theory; one which he applied with absolute rigidity to all conditions of men, and which he had never found to fail-so, at least, he had concluded.

But within this broad theory he recognised a great variety of practice. Some men cared for nothing but the theory, and would only find its limits when getting rather nigh to the criminal law; some modified it so as to fit it

6

to their own kindly dispositions; some to harmonise it with the doctrines of Christianity, 'making,' as Israel used to say to himself, sardonically, an awful discord of the job; some again, would use, abuse, or manipulate the theory to suit their natural passions-and so there was always plenty to do for such natural, practical philosophers as Israel, while seeking to discover how this man's bent lay, or whither that woman's fancy tempted her, when he wanted to benefit by the knowledge.

But what, then, means this portentous phenomenonthis Rees Thomas- a man whose every action seems to run counter, as by the operation of an invincible law or profound instinct, to Israel's life-long theory, and who is neither fool nor madman?

At least, Israel thinks he is neither of these things; nay, strange to say, almost hopes so, in spite of the fact that he is conscious the Deputy's theory and his own must be hopelessly irreconcilable.

The circumstance that most puzzles him is this-Why should he, Israel, care about the Deputy's theory? If he be neither fool nor madman, what then? What is that to Israel? Can't he eat, and drink, and sleep as well as ever? Has he not just as good reason to believe in his theory now that the Deputy rejects it, as if he had accepted it; or as if he had never known any such strange heretic come to disturb the social state?

He feels mortified, and confused, as he recognises the fact that either he or his theory has changed.

Why does not the Deputy waken, sane, healthy, and strong, and narrate to him the story of his past life, his inner life, that Israel may see with his own mental eyes, touch with his own mental hands, the very fountain or source whence such a life could spring up, grow, live, in a world like ours; conforming to it in all sorts of ways, yet at issue with it in the deepest things, and not for its own sake, but for the world's? Bah! It could not be true! It was a case of eccentricity, and Israel would think no more of it. As the doctor had said, he needed rest: he

would rest.

Alas for Israel! There was to be no rest for himexcept in action. Within a few minutes after making this promise to the doctor, and while he was noticing how much more regularly the Deputy breathed and how soft and noiselessly, he found himself suddenly face to face with the spectre he had known to be waiting for him, which he had avoided as long as he could without precisely fearing it, but the proportions and lineaments of which now appalled him with horror, as he prepared to confront it.

It was Ruin he beheld-ruin absolute-ruin from which there could be no escape!

The mine had existed and been worked so long without costly reparations only by aid of a constant series of tricky but skilful contrivances, to evade doing the things that needed to be done, in order to make it reasonably safe as regarded life, and reasonably secure as regarded the capital involved. He knew that only too well.

He knew not yet the precise amount of the recent damage,but he felt assured that one result at least would follow now or very soon-that the mine must be shut up, or still larger capital obtained than he had yet asked for.

Where was he to get it, now that the security he had to offer the mine--was so depreciated in actual value; and that again so greatly injured in commercial estimation by the accident? As Mr. Knight's employers had done, so would all other proposing capitalists do-leave him in the lurch at last.

He wondered many times, till indeed he was vexed with himself for so senseless a piece of self-annoyance, what the slumbering Deputy opposite him would think, if he could but know of one incident after another that now rose up in Israel's too faithful memory to trouble him; incidents where he had scented danger with unerring skill, but had concealed it from every living breast, and immediately set to work to put up obstacles of various kinds to prevent any of the colliers touching upon these peril-spots, but not attempting any but the most trivial efforts to remove the causes of danger.