increased when the traveller was involved in darkness, and at the same
time ignorant of the direction he ought to pursue. Nor was this the
worst evil to which our two wanderers were exposed. A considerable
number of mines had been opened in these wastes, and though the working
of them had been abandoned for several years, yet the shafts were still
open, many of them wholly unprotected either by rail or embankment, and
the aperture being even with the surface, and not wider than the mouth
of an ordinary-sized well, no one could possibly discern his danger in a
night so dark as it then was. A more fatal snare for entrapping a
benighted traveller could scarcely have been devised. But neither Vernon
nor Frank had the remotest suspicion of this danger; or, in fact, any
fears beyond the dread of spending the night in this howling wilderness.

At last, to their great relief, the rain subsided, and the clouds
breaking away disclosed the great bear and polar star, which afforded
them an unerring point to steer by, and raised strong hopes that if the
sky remained clear, and their legs would only hold out long enough
against the excessive fatigue of scrambling over the steep hillocks,
they might, by pursuing a perfectly straight course, at last get clear
of this desert spot, and reach a better kind of country, where they
might meet with some habitation or other that would at least afford them
rest and shelter until daybreak.

Now, when matters have become very bad, any change for the better,
however slight it be, imparts some cheering influence; and the relief
our drenched pedestrians felt from the mere ceasing of the rain, and
exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight,
proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to
make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they
at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less
irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed
itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated
with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over.
But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the
erring wanderers, who were now in the very midst of abandoned mines,
whose shafts yawned around them in every direction, many of which they
passed almost within a hair's-breadth of, unaware of the dangers that
thus lay in their path, and only congratulating