fe; and
crying, "My dear Jack, thank God you are restored alive to us."

"Thank God indeed," Jack said reverently; "it has been almost a miracle,
Nelly, and I am indeed thankful. We prayed nearly as hard as we worked,
and God was with us; otherwise assuredly we had never passed through
such danger uninjured. I thought many a time of you and Harry, and what
you would be doing and thinking.

"I never gave up hope, did I, Harry?" she said; "I thought that somehow
such a useful life as yours would be spared."

"Many other useful lives have been lost, Nelly," Jack said sadly; "but
it was not my time."

"And now," Nelly said changing her tone, "there are other things to talk
of. Will you please take a chair, sir," and she dropped a curtsy.
"Didn't I tell you, Jack," she said, laughing at the astonishment in
Jack's face, "that when you congratulated me on getting my post here and
called me Miss Hardy, that the time would come when I should say, Sir to
you. It has come, Jack, sooner than we expected, but I knew it would
come."

Then changing her tone again, as they sat looking at the fire, she went
on, "You know we are glad, Jack, Harry and I, more glad than we can say,
that needs no telling between us, does it?"

"None," Jack said. "We are one, we three, and no need to say we are glad
at each other's success."

"We have had happy days," Nelly said, "but they will never be quite the
same again. We shall always be friends, Jack, always--true and dear
friends, but we cannot be all in all to each other. I know, dear Jack,"
she said as she saw he was about to speak vehemently, "that you will be
as much our friend in one way as ever, but you cannot be our companion.
It is impossible, Jack. We have trod the same path together, but your
path leaves ours here. We shall be within sound of each other's voices,
we shall never lose sight of each other, but we are no longer together."

"I have not thought it over yet," Jack said quietly. "It is all too new
and too strange to me to see yet how things will work; but it is true,
Nelly, and it is the one drawback to my good fortune, that there must be
some little change between us. But in the friendship which began when
you stood by me at the old shaft and helped me to save Harry, there
will be no change. I have risen as I always had determined to rise; I
have worked for this from the day when Mr. Pastor, my artist friend,
told me it was possible I might reach it, but I never dreamed i