his
breast he bore the declaration of his birth, and in his heart he felt
that "peace of God which passeth understanding."

Down in the darkness the water dripped; up in the earth's sky the
stars were out and the moon was shining.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A STROKE OF LIGHTNING.

It was a hot day at Burnham Breaker. The sun of midsummer beat
fiercely upon the long and sloping roofs and against the coal-black
sides of the giant building.

Down in the engine-room, where there was no air stirring, and the
vapor of steam hung heavily in the atmosphere, the heat was almost
insupportable.

The engineer, clothed lightly as he was, fairly dripped with
perspiration. The fireman, with face and neck like a lobster, went
out, at intervals, and plunged his hands and his head too into the
stream of cool water sent out from the mine by the laboring pumps.

Up in the screen-room, the boys were sweltering above their chutes,
choking with the thick dust, wondering if the afternoon would never be
at an end.

Bachelor Billy, pushing the cars out from the head, said to himself
that he was glad Ralph was no longer picking slate. It was better that
he should work in the mines. It was cool there in summer and warm in
winter, and it was altogether more comfortable for the boy than it
could be in the breaker; neither was it any more dangerous, in his
opinion, than it was among the wheels and rollers of the screen-room.
He had labored in the mines himself, until the rheumatism came and put
a stop to his under-ground toil. He mourned greatly the necessity that
compelled him to give up this kind of work. It is hard for a miner to
leave his pillars and his chambers, his drill and powder-can and fuse,
and to seek other occupation on the surface of the earth. The very
darkness and danger that surround him at his task hold him to it with
an unaccountable fascination.

But Bachelor Billy had a good place here at the breaker. It was not
hard work that he was doing. Robert Burnham had given him the position
ten years and more ago.

Even on this hot mid-summer day, the heat was less where he was than
in any other part of the building. A cool current came up the shaft
and kept the air stirring about the head, and the loaded mine-cars
rose to the platform, dripping cold water from their sides, and that
was very refreshing to the eye as well as to the touch.

It was well along in the afternoon that Billy, looking out to the
north-west, saw a da