reen meadows and the bright
blue sky, and there--there--there--are the great white swans. No, no. I
forgot, they are not swans, they are ships sailing to the bright land you
told me of, where there is no suffering and no sorrow."

Then Hope, to his horror, began to see that this must be the very
hallucination of which he had read, a sweet illusion of green fields and
crystal water, which often precedes actual death by thirst and
starvation. He trembled, he prayed secretly to God to spare her, and not
to kill his new-found child, his darling, in his arms.

By-and-by Grace spoke again, but this time her senses were clear; "How
dark it's grown!" she said. "Ah, we are back again in that awful mine."
Then, with the patient fortitude of a woman when once she thinks the will
of the Almighty is declared, she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and she
said, soothingly, "Dear father, bow to Heaven's will;" then she held up
both her feeble arms to him--"kiss me, father--FOR WE ARE TO DIE!"

With these firm and patient words, she laid her sweet head upon the
ground, and hoped and feared no more.

But the man could not bow like the woman. He kissed her as she bade him,
and laid her gently down; but after that he sprang wildly to his feet in
a frenzy, and raged aloud, as his daughter could no longer hear him.
"No, no," he cried, "this thing can not be, they have had seven days to
get to us.

"Ah, but there are mountains and rocks of earth and coal piled up between
us. We are buried alive in the bowels of the earth.

"Well, and shouldn't I have blasted a hundred rocks, and picked through
mountains, to save a hundred lives, or to save one such life as this, no
matter whose child she was?

"Ah! you poor scum, you came to me whenever you wanted me, and you never
came in vain. But now that I want you, you smoke your pipes, and walk
calmly over this living tomb I lie in.

"Well, call yourselves men, and let your friends perish; I am a man, and
I can die."

Then he threw himself wildly on his knees over his insensible daughter.

"But my child! Oh God! look down upon my child! Do, pray, see the horror
of it. The horror and the hellish injustice! She has but just found her
father. She is just beginning life; it's not her time to die! Why, you
know, she only came here to save her father. Heaven's blessing is the
right of pious children; it's promised in God's Word. They are to live
long upon earth, not to be cut off like criminals."