at braw paper ye hae, Nellie. Wha put it on for ye? Was it
yirsel'?" asked the visitor with breath bated in admiration.

"Ay, it was that. I just got the chance o' the bargain, an' I thocht I'd
tak' it," she replied, with subdued pride.

"Oh, my! it's awful braw, an' sae weel matched too! I never saw anything
sae well done. You're rale weel-off, do ye ken."

"My God! What's wrang?" cried Nellie suddenly, gazing from the window
with blanched cheeks.

"I doot there's been an accident. I heard the bell gang for men three
tows a' rinnin', an' I see a lot o' men comin' up the brae. I doot the
pit's lowsed."

Both of them hurried to the door, and found that already a crowd of
women had flocked to the end of the row, and were standing waiting
anxiously on the men, in order to learn what had happened. They did not
talk, but gazed down the hill, each heart anxious to know if the
unfortunate one belonged to her. The sickening fear which grips the
heart of every miner's wife, when she sees that procession from the pit
before the proper quitting hour, lay heavy upon each one. The white
drawn faces, the set firm lips, and the deep troubled breathing told how
much the women were moved.

Wives and mothers, sweethearts and sisters, oh, what a hell of torture
they suffered in those few tense moments whilst waiting for the news,
which, though to a great extent it may relieve many, must break at least
one heart. No man, having once seen this, ever wants to witness it
again. Concentrated hell and torture with every moment, stabbing and
pulling at each heart and then--then the sad, mournful face of Andrew
Marshall as he steps forward slowly past Mag Robertson, past Jean
Fleming, past Jenny Maitland, past them all, and at last putting a
kindly hand on the shoulder of Nellie Sinclair, he says, with a catch in
his voice that would break a heart of granite: "Come awa' hame, Nellie.
Come awa' hame. Ye'll need to bear up."

Then it is whispered round: "It's Geordie Sinclair killed wi' a fa'."
And hope has died, and dreams have fled, and the world will never again
look bonnie and fresh and sweet and full of happiness, nor the blood
dance so joyously, nor the eyes ever again sparkle with the same soft
loving glance.

No more happy evenings, such as the night before had been, when the
glamor and romance of courtship days had come back, and they had found a
new beauty of love and the glory of life, in the easier circumstances
and rosy hopes