as going to shout the terrible
tidings down the shaft; and if Stephen should be near, instead of being
at work farther in the pit, the words would fall upon him without any
softening or preparation. He implored them to wait until he could run and
tell Miss Anne; but while he was speaking they saw Miss Anne herself
coming towards the pit, her face very pale and sorrowful, for the rumour
had reached the master's house, and she was hastening to meet Stephen,
and comfort him, if that were possible.

'Oh, Miss Anne!' cried Tim; 'it will kill poor Stephen, if it come upon
him sudden like. I know the way through the old pit to where poor little
Nan has fallen; and I'll go and find her. The roof's dropped in, and only
a boy could creep along. But who's to tell Stevie? Oh, Miss Anne,
couldn't you go down with me, and tell him gently your own self?'

'Yes, I will go,' said Miss Anne, weeping.

Underground, in those low, dark, pent-up galleries, lighted only here and
there by a glimmering lamp, the colliers were busy at their labours,
unconscious of all that was happening overhead. Stephen was at work at
some distance from the others, loading a train of small square waggons
with the blocks of coal which he and Black Thompson had picked out of the
earth. He was singing softly to himself the hymns that he and little Nan
had been learning during the summer in the Red Gravel Pit; and he smiled
as he fancied that little Nan was perhaps singing them over as well by
the cabin fire. He did not know, poor boy, that at that moment Tim was
creeping through the winding, blocked-up passages, so long untrodden, to
the bottom of the old shaft; and that when he returned he would be
bearing in his arms a sad, sad burden, upon which his tears would fall
unavailingly.

Stephen's comrades were all of a sudden very quiet, and their pickaxes no
longer gave dull muffled thumps upon the seam of coal; but he was too
busy to notice how idle and still they were. It was only when Cole spoke
to him, in a tone of extraordinary mildness, that the boy paused in his
rough and toilsome employment.

'My lad,' said Cole, 'Miss Anne's come down the pit, and she's asking for
thee.'

'She promised she'd come some day,' cried Stephen, with a thrill of
pleasure and a quicker throbbing of his heart, as he darted along the
narrow paths to the loftier and more open space near the bottom of the
shaft, where Miss Anne was waiting for him. The covered lamps gave too
lit