a stalwart giant with
bare arms, begrimed and bleeding, face smoked, hair and eyebrows black
with coal-dust, and eyes flaming like red coals. He sprang with one
fearless bound down to the coal-truck, and caught up his wife in his
arms, and held her to his panting bosom. Ropes, ladder, everything--and
they were saved; while the corpse of the assassin whirled round and round
in the subsiding eddies of the black water, and as that water ran away
into the mine, lay, coated with mud, at the feet of those who had saved
his innocent victims.

CHAPTER XXIV.

STRANGE COMPLICATIONS.

Exert all the powers of your mind, and conceive, if you can, what that
mother felt whose only son sickened, and, after racking her heart with
hopes and fears, died before her eyes, and was placed in his coffin and
carried to his rest. Yet One in the likeness of a man bade the bearers
stand still, then, with a touch, made the coffin open, the dead come
back, blooming with youth and health, and handed him to his mother.

That picture no mortal mind can realize; but the effort will take you
so far as this: you may imagine what Walter Clifford felt when, almost
at the climax of despair, he received from that living tomb the good
and beautiful creature who was the light of his eyes and the darling of
his heart.

How he gloated on her! How he murmured words of comfort and joy over her
as the cage carried her and Hope and him up again into the blessed
sunshine! And there, what a burst of exultation and honest rapture
received them!

Everybody was there. The news of Hope's signal had been wired to the
surface. An old original telegraph had been set up by Colonel Clifford,
and its arms set flying to tell him. That old campaigner was there, with
his spring break and mattresses, and an able physician. Bartley was
there, pale and old, and trembling, and crying. He fell on his knees
before Hope and Grace. She drew back from him with repulsion; but he
cried out, "No matter! no matter! They are saved! they are saved!"

Walter carried her to his father, and left Bartley kneeling. Then he
dashed back for Hope, who did not move, and found him on his knees
insensible. A piece of coal, driven by one of the men's picks, had struck
him on the temple. The gallant fellow had tried to hide his hurt with his
handkerchief, but the handkerchief was soaked with blood, and the man,
exhausted by hunger, violent emotions, and this last blow, felt neither
his troubl