e more and I shall be in
heaven."

He stepped back while he spoke--the bucket went rapidly upwards, and
Trevarrow, sitting down in the bottom of the shaft, covered his eyes
with a piece of rock and awaited the issue.

The rumbling explosion immediately followed, and the shaft was filled
with smoke and flame and hurling stones. One of these latter, shooting
upwards, struck and cut the ascending miner on his forehead as he looked
down to observe the fate of his self-sacrificing comrade!

Maggot was saved, but he was of too bold and kindly a nature to remain
for a moment inactive after the explosion was over. At once he
descended, and, groping about among the debris, soon found his friend--
alive, and almost unhurt! A mass of rock had arched him over--or,
rather, the hand of God, as if by miracle, had delivered the Christian
miner.

After he was got up in safety to the level above they asked him why he
had been so ready to give up his life to save his friend.

"Why," said David quietly, "I did think upon his wife and the child'n,
and little Grace seemed to say to me, `Take care o' faither'--besides,
there are none to weep if I was taken away, so the Lord gave me grace to
do it."

That night there were glad and grateful hearts in Maggot's cottage--and
never in this world was a more flat and emphatic contradiction given to
any statement, than that which was given to David Trevarrow's
assertion--"There are none to weep if I was taken away."

[A short but beautiful account of the above incident will be found in a
little volume of poems, entitled _Lays from the Mine, the Moor, and the
Mountain_, written by John Harris, a Cornish miner.]

CHAPTER THIRTY.

REVEALS SOME ASTONISHING FACTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES.

Sorrow and trouble now began to descend upon Mr Thomas Donnithorne like
a thick cloud.

Reduced from a state of affluence to one bordering on absolute poverty,
the old man's naturally buoyant spirit almost gave way, and it needed
all the attentions and the cheering influence of his good wife and sweet
Rose Ellis to keep him from going (as he often half-jestingly
threatened) to the end of Cape Cornwall and jumping into the sea.

"It's all over with me, Oliver," said he one morning, after the return
of his nephew from London. "A young fellow like you may face up against
such difficulties, but what is an old man to do? I can't begin the
world over again; and as for the shares I have in the various mine