ued and may never
know whether my love for you is returned or not."

At this moment there was a tremendous crash behind me, and, turning,
I saw a mass of broken ice upon the floor of the cave, with a cloud
of dust and smaller fragments still falling. And then with a great
scratching and scraping, and a howl loud enough to waken the echoes of
all the lower regions, down came a red-headed, drunken shoemaker. I can
not say that he was drunk at that moment, but I knew the man the moment
I saw his carroty poll, and it was drink which had sent him to the
poorhouse.

But the sprawling and howling cobbler did not reach the floor. A rope
had been fastened around his waist to prevent a fall in case the bottom
of the pit should suddenly give way, and he hung dangling in mid
air with white face and distended eyes, cursing and swearing and
vociferously entreating to be pulled up. But before he received any
answer from above, or I could speak to him, there came through the hole
in the roof of the cave a shower of stones and gravel, and with them a
frantic Italian, his legs and arms outspread, his face wild with terror.

Just as he appeared in view he grasped the rope of the cobbler, and,
though in a moment he came down heavily upon the floor of the chamber,
this broke his fall, and he did not appear to be hurt. Instantly he
crouched low and almost upon all fours, and began to run around the
chamber, keeping close to the walls and screaming, I suppose to his
saints, to preserve him from the torments of the frozen damned.

In the midst of this hubbub came the voice of Agnes through the hole:
"Oh, Mr. Cuthbert, what has happened? Are you alive?"

I was so disappointed by the appearance of these wretched interlopers
at the moment it was about to be decided whether my life--should it last
for years, or but for a few minutes--was to be black or bright, and I
was so shaken and startled by the manner of their entry upon the scene,
that I could not immediately shape the words necessary to inform Agnes
what had happened. But, collecting my faculties, I was about to speak,
when suddenly, with the force of the hind leg of a mule, I was pushed
away from the aperture, and the demoniac Italian clapped his great
mouth to the end of the tube and roared through it a volume of oaths
and supplications. I attempted to thrust aside the wretched being, but
I might as well have tried to move the ice barrier itself. He had
perceived that some one outsid