ance,
and the hope with infants' eyes, through the bloom of beauty's promise,
to the rich and ripe fulfilment, and the falling back to rest); sea we
have (with all its wonder shed on eyes, and ears, and heart; and the
thought of something more)--but without the sky to look at, what would
earth, and sea, and even our own selves, be to us?

Do we look at earth with hope? Yes, for victuals only. Do we look at
sea with hope? Yes, that we may escape it. At the sky alone (though
questioned with the doubts of sunshine, or scattered with uncertain
stars), at the sky alone we look with pure hope and with memory.

Hence it always hurt my feelings when I got into that bucket, with my
small-clothes turned up over, and a kerchief round my hat. But knowing
that my purpose was sound, and my motives pure, I let the sky grow to
a little blue hole, and then to nothing over me. At the bottom Master
Carfax met me, being captain of the mine, and desirous to know my
business. He wore a loose sack round his shoulders, and his beard was
two feet long.

'My business is to speak with you,' I answered rather sternly; for
this man, who was nothing more than Uncle Reuben's servant, had carried
things too far with me, showing no respect whatever; and though I did
not care for much, I liked to receive a little, even in my early days.

'Coom into the muck-hole, then,' was his gracious answer; and he led me
into a filthy cell, where the miners changed their jackets.

'Simon Carfax, I began, with a manner to discourage him; 'I fear you are
a shallow fellow, and not worth my trouble.'

'Then don't take it,' he replied; 'I want no man's trouble.'

'For your sake I would not,' I answered; 'but for your daughter's sake
I will; the daughter whom you left to starve so pitifully in the
wilderness.'

The man stared at me with his pale gray eyes, whose colour was lost from
candle light; and his voice as well as his body shook, while he cried,--

'It is a lie, man. No daughter, and no son have I. Nor was ever child of
mine left to starve in the wilderness. You are too big for me to tackle,
and that makes you a coward for saying it.' His hands were playing with
a pickaxe helve, as if he longed to have me under it.

'Perhaps I have wronged you, Simon,' I answered very softly; for the
sweat upon his forehead shone in the smoky torchlight; 'if I have, I
crave your pardon. But did you not bring up from Cornwall a little maid
named "Gwenny," and supposed to