! never fear now!"
sprang forward, and was over the precipice in the dark, and flew down,
and was dashed to pieces. His sisters heard a rush, a faint shriek, and
suddenly stopping, escaped the destruction that poor David had found.

CHAPTER II.--MILL LIFE.

We must pass over the painful and dreadful particulars of that night,
and of a long time to come; the maniacal rage of the father, the
shattered heart and feelings of the mother, the dreadful state of the
two remaining children, to whom their brother was one of the most
precious objects in a world which, like theirs, contained so few. One
moment to have seen him full of life, and fun, and bravado, and almost
the next a lifeless and battered corpse, was something too strange and
terrible to be soon surmounted. But this was woefully aggravated by the
cruel anger of their father, who continued to regard them as guilty of
the death of his favorite boy. He seemed to take no pleasure in them. He
never spoke to them but to scold them. He drank more deeply than ever,
and came home later; and when there, was sullen and morose. When their
mother, who suffered severely, but still plodded on with all her duties,
said, "David, they are thy children too," he would reply, savagely, "Hod
thy tongue! What's a pack o' wenches to my lad?"

What tended to render the miner more hard toward the two girls was a
circumstance which would have awakened a better feeling in a softer
father's heart. Nancy, the younger girl, since the dreadful catastrophe,
had seemed to grow gradually dull and defective in her intellect, she
had a slow and somewhat idiotic air and manner. Her mother perceived it,
and was struck with consternation by it. She tried to rouse her, but in
vain. She could not perform her ordinary reading and spelling lessons.
She seemed to have forgotten what was already learned. She appeared to
have a difficulty in moving her legs, and carried her hands as if she
had suffered a partial paralysis. Jane, her sister, was dreadfully
distressed at it, and she and her mother wept many bitter tears over
her. One day, in the following spring, they took her with them to
Ashford, and consulted the doctor there. On examining her, and hearing
fully what had taken place at the time of the brother's death--the fact
of which he well knew, for it, of course, was known to the whole country
round--he shook his head, and said he was afraid they must make up their
minds to a sad case; that the terror