Clonal iSmliifiet Victor ml Home llampawiioia. 
M 
was not a favorite, but she was always an object of in¬ 
terest. 
But now her ashy pale face, with the lips apart, and eyes 
so full of misery, woke their compassion. 
“ She looks quite beat down from her grand airs,” whis¬ 
pered one to another, as Wiunie alighted, and gave Thun¬ 
derbolt into the care of a lad. “ And him such a hand¬ 
some young man. I wonder if she knows ? ” 
“ What are you whispering about ? ” Winnie cried. “Tell 
me what they are doing in the mine.” 
The women with dull, sad faces looked askance and 
nudged each other. 
“ You tell,” muttered one. “ She don’t know he’s gone 
down.” 
“ No, jmu tell.” 
At last Long Bill’s wife spoke up : 
“ Does seem as if you ought to know, miss. That young 
man, your sweetheart, so they say, has gone down to help 
dig out the man that’s buried under part of the old gallery. 
And the roof is like to fall and crush him, and the hands 
as has gone down along with him. No more than a chance 
if they ever crawl out alive.” 
Winnie did not cry out. She put her hand to her side, 
and bent over as if a sharp pain had gone through it. 
“Poor thing!” murmured one of the women, “she’ll 
take it, hard if worse comes to worst.” 
“ Tain’t no worse for her nor the rest of us,” responded 
another under her breath. 
“ Nothing like so bad,” was the speedy answer. “ She’s 
rollin’ in money, and there’s as good fish in the sea as ever 
was ketched, but we and our childers will be left to starve 
if any ill chance befalls the men” 
Low as the words were spoken, they came to Winnie’s 
ears. 
‘What is that you are saying?—that you and your chil¬ 
dren will be left to starve if your husbands die along with 
him ? God avert the calamitjy but if anything happens 
down there, you shall be to me as my sisters.” 
Long Bill’s wife had begun to sob now in a hard, dry 
way. 
“ That’s flue to say, miss, but a grand young leddy like 
you can’t be expected to remember all her words.” 
“So you doubt me? ” with a kind of pitying vehemence, 
while a rush of emotion brought a cool flood against her 
burning eyeballs, and imparted a sense of relief. “ You 
think I shall forgot you, and what has happened to-day? 
If 1 do, may God forget me in my need.” 
She sat down on the end of a stick of timber, and joined 
the heart-sick, weary vigil of the other women. Little 
Charley, the deformed boy-, attracted by the grand-looking, 
pale lady, hitched himself along the ground, and began 
furtively feeling of the fur on her cloak. 
“ Come here; she don’t want you,” his mother cried 
sharply, but Winnie took hint up in her lap and nursed him, 
and the touch of his tiny hand, and the little, pallid, pinched 
face smiling shyly up in hers, helped her to bear the agony 
of that hour. At last word came up the shaft that the 
danger was still great, but not so great as it had been. The 
meu were all at work under Mr. Halcourt’s directions; and 
he was doing wonders. 
Winnifred felt a glow of pride warm her heart. Bradley 
was a hero after all, and worthy of any woman’s love. She 
was glad even if she had lost him forever, and soul and 
flesh quivered with the agony of that loss. 
Time went by uncounted while the work progressed 
down iu the darkness, and life aDd death hung on a thread. 
Little Charley had gone to sleep in her arms, and was 
nestled in the warm folds of 'the cloak. Winnie sat dry¬ 
eyed, but with her face marble-pale, every sense strained 
in the agonized intensity of waiting and watching and lis¬ 
tening for tidings from below. The poor women forgot 
their own trouble to cast pityiDg glances at her. 
“Poor thing! she can’t cry,” one whispered to another. 
“It will break her heart if anything haps him.” 
At length something came and touched Winnie’s shoul¬ 
der, where she was seated on the timber, a little apart from 
the others. She turned mechanically and saw a decent, 
mild-faced young woman standing near her. 
“I thought I must come and tell you, miss, that the 
young leddy is very bad, and quite gone out of her 
mind.” 
Winnie roused herself by an effort, and looked in the 
woman’s face. 
“ What do you mean? ” 
“Why, the young leddy, your friend. My mon found 
her lying ’long side the road, and first off he thought she 
was clean gone. But she come to a little, and he brought 
her in the cart to my cabin. There she lies just sensin’ 
nothing at all, and ’twould move a stone to hear her pite¬ 
ous talk. She calls on you, miss, and," sinking her voice, 
“on the young man down yon with the miners.” 
Winnifred experienced a great shock, for recollection 
came rushing back upon her like a boiling torrent through 
the bed of a dried up river. She had forgotten that Y r i r- 
ginie was lost, for her whole being hung on Bradley’s fate. 
Now the terrible past was revealed as by a sheet of light¬ 
ning, and her heart seemed torn in two. How could she 
leave that spot while his life still hung in the balance ? 
and yet she must go. 
She raised her hands to her head and moaned. Then 
she slowly rose, put down the sleeping child in its mother’s 
lap, and mechanically dragged her steps to Mary Smither’s 
door. Pushing it open, the bed was before her where the 
poor girl lay with wild dilated eyes, her bosom heaving 
with thick pants, and the bale fires of fever burning in her 
face. Instantly she rushed forward and took the sick girl 
in her arms. Yirginie crept and clung convulsively to her 
bosom, as before she had cowered away. She seemed to 
devour her face, pressing hot kisses on her hands, and 
calling her sometimes mother, sometimes by her own name, 
with every term of passionate endearment. 
Winnifred held her close, and the tears that had so long- 
refused to come rained down in a hot shower. Along witli 
the capacity to suffer, a great well of tenderness had opened 
in her nature. Indescribable thoughts and feelings rushed 
over her, and years of intense life seemed compressed into 
a moment of time. The familiar presence acted like a se¬ 
dative on Yirginie’s excited brain, and soothed and quieted, 
with her head on Winnie’s shoulder, she sank into a half 
lethargic sleep, in which old memories were mingled with 
murmurs of Bradley’s name, and broken accounts of her 
wanderings. She slept for Half an hour and then her eyes 
opened with a saner look. Winnie bent down and put her 
lips to her ear. 
“ Hush, my darling,” she whispered ; “be quiet, and I 
will find Bradley and bring him to you.” 
The words were a powerful charm. Yirginie’s weary, 
flower-like head fell back upon the coarse pillow, her lips 
parted in a sweet smile, and some lovely vision seemed to 
float before her half-closed eyes. 
Winnie shuddered at the thought of what she had 
promised. Would it be her cruel task to lay Bradley, 
maimed and dying, at the feet of his love? A great pang 
shot through her, for even in death he would belong to an¬ 
other. And then Virginie would escape out of life like a 
bird with both wiugs broken; and the future opened be¬ 
fore the youug girl’s lovely eyes like a vast desert tract 
where no green thing could ever grow. 
Now that Yirginie was sleeping, she stole out of the 
cabin into tho fresh air. Off at the pit’s mouth she could 
discern a group of dusky miners. Others were coming out, 
and women and children were running wildly about Win¬ 
nie’s heart beat thick as if it would burst through her side. 
She began to run, but stumbled and almost fell. Still she 
kept on, and when she reached the shaft, quite pale and 
breathless, the miners made way respectfully. 
The cage was coming up, and Bradley with it. She 
was startled at the sight of him, for he was like a spectre. 
His coat and hat were off, and liis white shirt and other 
clothes were torn, and grimed with clay, and bloody from 
a wound in the temple, of which he seemed unconscious. 
In the bottom of the cage lay something huddled together, 
a mere mass crushed and disfigured out of all semblance to 
a human form. One of the men had considerately thrown 
his jacket over the bruised face. 
Winnie pressed toward her cousin. 
“ Are you hurt, Bradley ?” she asked, noticing the wound 
on his temple. 
“ No,” said he, and then he raised his hand; “ or if I 
am, it is a mere scratch. The men maintained a respectful 
silence. “ We found that poor creature dead,” he added, 
as he turned and pointed to the cage.” He had been dead 
for hours.” Then he approached Winnie, with a look of 
dumb entreaty and dread. 
“ Bor God’s sake tell me what you know about her. Is 
she alive ? Do not fear to let me know the worst.” 
“ She is alive,” said Winnie, controlling and steadying 
her voice. “ She is here waiting for you.” 
Bradley could have covered her feet with kisses. At 
that moment the young engineer, who had done yeoman’s 
service in the dangerous work of digging out, drew near 
and saluted Winnifred politely. 
“ You know, Miss Braithwaite,” said he, “ that these re¬ 
mains must lie where they are until the coroner can be 
fetched from’ Deanport.” 
Winnifred drew herself up to her full height. A 
haughty light shot from her eye, and iter tone had its old 
assured ring. “I know, Mr. Elicott, that these remains 
will not stay where they are. I am sole mistress of Hal- 
court mine, and shall have the body removed immediately 
to the school-house and prepared for burial.” 
“But pardon me, Miss Braithwaite, you will be amenable 
to the law. A lady might not understand what is required 
in such cases.” 
“ Some ladies might be grateful for your instructions, 
but I am not,” returned Winnie defiantly. “Nobody but 
myself can suffer. I am full and complete owner of this 
place, and what is done is done by my orders. Look here, 
my men,” turning to the group of miners, “prepare a litter 
of some sort, as soon as possible, and take up this body 
and carry it to the school-house. 
“ Yes, mum, we’ll do it,” returned Long Bill and Smith- 
ers almost simultaneously, “ that is,” added Bill, turning 
toward Bradley, “ if his honor says so.” 
Bradley nodded his head, and in less than five minutes 
the litter was prepared, and the mangled remains laid upon 
it, and the little cortege began to move slowly toward the 
school-house with Winnifred and Bradley at its head, and 
the miners and their wives and children straggling on be¬ 
hind. 
“ Lay it here,” said Winnie, when she had improvised a 
sort of bier with two or three of the school benches. They 
obeyed her orders in silence. The tattered jacket was still 
over the face, and when the body had been put down, she 
turned and said resolutely to the men : 
“ That will do ; now you may go out; I will take charge 
here myself.” 
A puzzled, surprised look came into the rough faces. 
The men hesitated and hung back. 
“ Do 3 r ou hear me?” Winnie cried, with an imperious 
gesture. “Now begone.” 
“ Taiu’t fit for the likes of you, miss, to be left here with 
such a one as him, if I may make hold to say so, is it 
your Honor?” Long Bill ventured to say, humbly appeal¬ 
ing to Bradley for a confirmation of his opinion. 
But Bradley motioned him to go out, and followed him¬ 
self and shut the door behind him. 
Then Winnie was left alone with that thing, lying- still 
and stark upon the rude bier. She walked to the door and 
locked it, for the key remained on the inside, and then 
turned with a shudder. Could she approach, could she 
look on that face ghastly and livid in death, which she had 
never seen in life, the face of one so strangely mingled with 
her fate ? 
She thought of all poor Yirginie had suffered, and in 
spite of her own pangs, her own terrible sense of bereave¬ 
ment, she was glad the stricken girl Had been spared this 
hour. Cowering for a moment, she hid her face, for it was 
a ghastly, an almost loathsome task she had set herself to 
do. But Winnifred was a brave girl. 
Tlie struggle ended, she went forward and raised the 
jacket and looked steadily at the dead, discolored counte¬ 
nance with all semblance of humanity crushed out of it. 
An awful and swift doom had fallen upon the sinner. One 
long glance sufficed, and then she dropped the covering 
and. went forward with her work. 
For the sake of the living, it was her duty to see that no 
damning evidence of guilt remained on the dead body. 
Close hidden in the breast she found what she was iu search 
of, and at the end of five minutes opened the school-house 
door holding a small packet iu her hand. 
Bradley was awaiting her outside. He had lied a hand¬ 
kerchief about his head to stanch the bleeding of his 
wound. Mr. Elicott, the young engineer, had joined him 
with a dissatisfied countenance. He was kicking a bit of 
turf with the toe.of his boot. Winnifred’s defiance of law 
and order still weighed upon his mind 
“ Smoky Duff and his wife ought to be made to testify,” 
he was saying just as Winnie approached them. 
“ Mr. Elicott,” Winnie returned with some asperity, “ I 
beg you not to concern yourself about Smoky Duff’ and his 
wife. If an investigation is necessary, be sure I shall do 
all in my power to further it. Meantime, I must request 
you to distribute to the miners this packet of money, re¬ 
serving for yourself one-quartor of the whole sum. I give 
it to them and to 3 r ou as a reward for 3 mm- bravo con¬ 
duct.” 
The young man was almost stunned by the magnitude 
of the. sum which he saw Winnifred had thrust into his 
hand. 
“ Why, Miss Braithwaite, this is a great deal of money. 
You cannot mean to give the whole.” 
“ Every penny of it,” she replied and turned her back. 
Bradley motioned her one side with his hand. 
“Don’t you mean to tell me where she is ? 
fering the tortures of the damned.” 
“I will take j r ou to her now,” she answered, 
there was a duty to perform." 
They walked together through the little dirty laue of 
cabins in silence, but with hearts beating tumultuously. 
The women had collected about their doors, and were gos¬ 
siping in groups. When they approached the Smithers 
cottage, Mary ran out to meet them with a tremulous ray 
of joy in her face. 
“ Oh, miss, I thitik she’s a little better, ’deed, I do. 
She’s quieted down wonderful and ain’t near so wild. But 
the doctor you sent for, he couldn’t be found, miss. He 
was off Basset way tending a man in a fit.” 
“No matter,” said Winnie, with a grave smile, “ I have 
brought a better physician along with me.” 
She paused an instant, for a rush of wings seemed to 
up-bear her like a strong inspiration. She was no longer 
an actor in the scene, but an observer of a strange and 
beautiful drama. Her heart was melted within her; for 
the first time the meaning of life, and the blessedness of 
sacrifice came over her to lift her out of self up to some 
higher level. Softly she opened the cabin door and whis¬ 
pered to Bradley as she gently pushed him forward. 
“ Go in and save her, for you belong to each other, and 
she is as innocent as an angel.” 
(To be continued.) 
I am suf- 
1 but first 
