hich they were allowed to carry down.

Poor Dame Ursula wept bitterly at the notion of taking her darling
little Lionel into such a dismal pit. But there was no help for it; down
they must go, and live like the rest at the bottom of the gloomy mine,
whilst Martin, with a pickaxe, wrought for gold.

... The days passed, and the weeks passed, and the months, and the
_years_! And little Lionel was growing up amidst the dross. His long
hair was filthy, and matted together, and his skin was always stained
with the clay. His parents could scarcely know whether he was a lovely
boy or not. It was so dark down there, that his mother could not show
his blue eyes to the neighbours; yet she ever kept him by her side, for
fear of losing him, and also because she dreaded he might learn bad ways
from the gold-diggers--to curse and swear like them, and tell lies, and
steal other people's treasures.

And poor Martin dug from year-end to year-end, in the weary hope of some
day lighting on a great heap of wealth.

The time dragged slowly on, and Lionel's father was getting old and
weak, and his pickaxe fell with feeble, quavering strokes into the
earth; and Lionel's poor mother was growing blind with constantly
peering after her son through the half-obscurity of their underground
abode.

Then one morning she missed him altogether, having mistaken for him
another youth, whom she followed and then found with bitter anguish to
be not her boy. Thus Lionel was alone; and he, too, searched for his
mother, and, in so doing, became completely lost in the mine.

On and on he wandered, through endless subterraneous corridors, until at
last he spied a feeble glimmer before him. He never remembered to have
been here before, or to have seen this light. It was the entrance to the
mine.

There was a large basket, with two old men standing in it; and they told
Lionel that they were about to be taken up into the daylight.

"Oh, let me go with you!" cried Lionel. "Take me also to the daylight,
if only for a little while!"

They hoisted him into the basket; and immediately several unseen hands
from above drew all three right up, out of the dark gold mine. The pale,
thin ray grew stronger, broader, brighter as they ascended; and, at the
mouth of the mine, a perfect flood of golden sunshine overwhelmed
Lionel, who now held his hands across his brow, and felt painfully
dazzled.

"Young man," said a voice beside him, in mournful accents, "this upper