They
were met by the old clerk, who ran up to them with a black and
disfigured face.

'You appear to have been near the scene of the accident,' said Arwed to
him. 'Are there many people injured?'

'Thank God only two; who, moreover, are no great loss!' answered the
clerk, turning again to show them the way. 'An officer, wishing to
instruct us how to blow out the ore, so managed that instead of the ore
he blew himself into the air, and a piece of the roof of the mine with
him.'

'The explosion was too violent for a mere removal of ore,' remarked
Swedenborg.

'Very true, most honored sir,' answered the clerk. 'There also went
with it a small cask of powder which was standing near.'

By this time they had arrived at the place. The thick smoke almost
suffocated them. The torches of the miners, hurrying to and fro, like
nebulous stars, faintly lighted the scene of destruction. A monstrous
mountain mass, consisting mostly of rocks and stones, had become
loosened by the force of the shock, and covered the bottom to a great
height with fragments, through the fissures of which little flames were
seen playing.

'They will lie quietly in this coffin until the last day!' observed the
clerk.

'In God's name!' shrieked Christine, 'who is the other sufferer?'

'The brigand leader, who was sentenced here for life,' answered the
clerk, with indifference.

'Mac Donalbain!' murmured the poor wife, sinking lifeless to the earth.

CHAPTER LIII.

Christine lay at the parsonage in that last hard struggle which
releases the soul from its earthly imprisonment. At her bed-side sat
Arwed, with humid eyes, his hands in the cold grasp of hers. Near her
pillow stood Swedenborg, with his piercing prophet-glance fixed
immovably upon the sufferer.

'The symptoms of death are already observable,' whispered he to the
weeping curate. 'Her end is near.'

'She has suffered so much,' said Arwed, 'that if her heart were iron it
must break under these hard and repeated blows.'

At this moment Christine suddenly rose in her bed, turned her beauteous
eyes with heavenly tenderness upon Arwed, and eagerly pressed his hand
to her bosom.

'At the brink of the grave,' said she, 'all false appearances must
vanish. So near the source of eternal truth, I may now speak the truth
to you. I have loved you, Arwed, loved you with all the powers of my
passionate soul, from the moment when you stood before me in the
knig