ays, do you think?"

"Days?" repeated Nell, as though the word had no meaning for her, and
she shook her head to signify entire want of comprehension.

Madge took her hand, and stroked it caressingly. "How old are you, my
lassie?" she asked, smiling kindly at her.

Nell shook her head again.

"Yes, yes," continued Madge, "how many years old?"

"Years?" replied Nell. She seemed to understand that word no better than
days! Simon, Harry, Jack, and the rest, looked on with an air of mingled
compassion, wonder, and sympathy. The state of this poor thing, clothed
in a miserable garment of coarse woolen stuff, seemed to impress them
painfully.

Harry, more than all the rest, seemed attracted by the very peculiarity
of this poor stranger. He drew near, took Nell's hand from his mother,
and looked directly at her, while something like a smile curved her
lip. "Nell," he said, "Nell, away down there--in the mine--were you all
alone?"

"Alone! alone!" cried the girl, raising herself hastily. Her features
expressed terror; her eyes, which had appeared to soften as Harry looked
at her, became quite wild again. "Alone!" repeated she, "alone!"--and
she fell back on the bed, as though deprived of all strength.

"The poor bairn is too weak to speak to us," said Madge, when she had
adjusted the pillows. "After a good rest, and a little more food, she
will be stronger. Come away, Simon and Harry, and all the rest of you,
and let her go to sleep." So Nell was left alone, and in a very few
minutes slept profoundly.

This event caused a great sensation, not only in the coal mines, but in
Stirlingshire, and ultimately throughout the kingdom. The strangeness of
the story was exaggerated; the affair could not have made more commotion
had they found the girl enclosed in the solid rock, like one of those
antediluvian creatures who have occasionally been released by a stroke
of the pickax from their stony prison. Nell became a fashionable wonder
without knowing it. Superstitious folks made her story a new subject for
legendary marvels, and were inclined to think, as Jack Ryan told Harry,
that Nell was the spirit of the mines.

"Be it so, Jack," said the young man; "but at any rate she is the good
spirit. It can have been none but she who brought us bread and water
when we were shut up down there; and as to the bad spirit, who must
still be in the mine, we'll catch him some day."

Of course James Starr had been at once informed of all t