d watched the preparations for the descent.

Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so
bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on
the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though
wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of
ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley.
All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley
were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life--that
sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to
the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been
the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented
toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a
warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she
seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out
in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men's
hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return.

The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the
men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to
those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were houses
of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth had gone
from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and had left
everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt to soften
the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended on the
weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark
corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly
grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at
Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on.

Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by
Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved
living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men
near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried
to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy and
whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked at
her in wonder.

Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being of
a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which
Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich