some distance from the others, loading a train of small square waggons
with the blocks of coal which he and Black Thompson had picked out of the
earth. He was singing softly to himself the hymns that he and little Nan
had been learning during the summer in the Red Gravel Pit; and he smiled
as he fancied that little Nan was perhaps singing them over as well by
the cabin fire. He did not know, poor boy, that at that moment Tim was
creeping through the winding, blocked-up passages, so long untrodden, to
the bottom of the old shaft; and that when he returned he would be
bearing in his arms a sad, sad burden, upon which his tears would fall
unavailingly.

Stephen's comrades were all of a sudden very quiet, and their pickaxes no
longer gave dull muffled thumps upon the seam of coal; but he was too
busy to notice how idle and still they were. It was only when Cole spoke
to him, in a tone of extraordinary mildness, that the boy paused in his
rough and toilsome employment.

'My lad,' said Cole, 'Miss Anne's come down the pit, and she's asking for
thee.'

'She promised she'd come some day,' cried Stephen, with a thrill of
pleasure and a quicker throbbing of his heart, as he darted along the
narrow paths to the loftier and more open space near the bottom of the
shaft, where Miss Anne was waiting for him. The covered lamps gave too
little light for him to see how pale and sorrow-stricken she looked; but
the solemn tenderness of her voice sank deeply into his heart.

'Stephen, my dear boy,' she said, 'are you sure that I care for you, and
would not let any trouble come upon you if I could help it?'