more than nine for the milk of the mother'--or else the child would draw
an unsustaining nourishment from the strongest breast. She could have
argued her exceptional robustness against another than he. But the dead
father wanting to build a great race of men and women ruled.

Carinthia knelt at the cradle of a princeling gone from the rich repast
to his alternative kingdom.

'You will bring him over when he wakes,' she said to Madge. 'Mrs. Wythan
would like to see him every day. Martha can walk now.'

'She can walk and hold a child in her two arms, my lady,' said Madge.
'She expects miners popping up out of the bare ground when she sees no
goblins.'

'They!--they know him, they would not hurt him, they know my son,' her
mistress answered.

The population of the mines in revolt had no alarms for her. The works
were empty down below. Men sat by the wayside brooding or strolled in
groups, now and then loudly exercising their tongues; or they stood in
circle to sing hymns: melancholy chants of a melancholy time for all.

How would her father have acted by these men? He would have been among
them. Dissensions in his mine were vapours of a day. Lords behaved
differently. Carinthia fancied the people must regard their master as a
foreign wizard, whose power they felt, without the chance of making their
cry to him heard. She, too, dealt with a lord. It was now his wish for
her to leave the place where she had found some shreds of a home in the
thought of being useful. She was gathering the people's language; many