romulgated, the
meeting separated with the intention of giving the matter a careful
re-consideration in case any solution might present itself hitherto
unthought of.

Minnie was in very low spirits indeed, for her father was looking more
care-worn and troubled every day, and was even now away attending one of
those meetings from which he usually returned only to shut himself up in
his study without seeing or speaking to any one.

Mabel was not out that day, she was naturally rather delicate, and had
drooped very much of late, indeed, she had not been right since the
night of Mrs. Malone's death, and this added a new cause for anxiety to
Minnie's already troubled mind.

She walked slowly home trying to think of a way of bringing their plan
to a successful issue, and so doing something, at least, towards the
diffusion of a better spirit among the people. She could not bear the
thought of being idle while there was a vague possibility of the
slightest improvement being made in the present aspect of affairs. But
her brain seemed willing to turn to anything but that, and she found
herself as far off as ever from any settlement by the time she reached
home.

Her father had not yet returned, and the boys were out, so she sat down
in the window to await their arrival. She had fallen into a sort of
dream, and was performing all sorts of impossible feats before an
admiring audience, composed for the most part of miners, but among whom
she could distinguish the faces of her father, Mabel, Charlie, and a
certain Mr. Laurence, the identical good-looking Methodist minister to
whom Mona Cameron had on one occasion alluded.

Strangely enough, or rather, not strangely at all, for what impossible
thing is not possible in a dream, Mona was her fellow-actor in this
vision, and the two were in the midst of some wonderful acrobatic
display, when they happened to touch each other and the result was a
sudden "phiz," not a moral "phiz," such as the pupils of Miss Marsden's
school were in the habit of witnessing, but a real, or rather what
seemed to her a real chemical "phiz" in which both were involved, and
without much surprise she beheld herself seethe and bubble "just like
lemonade," as she afterwards described it, and finally vanish into
viewless vapour.

Just at that moment a sharp report in her ear caused her to start and
wake, and there, sure enough, was her father in the act of drawing the
cork of a lemonade bottle, while Archie