he island, and then leave it for many a long day.

He had a bundle with one brush, one comb, a piece of yellow soap, and two
changes of linen, one for himself, and one for his little Grace--item,
his fiddle, and a reaping hook; for it was a late harvest in the north,
and he foresaw he should have to work his way and play his way, or else
beg, and he was too much of a man for that. His child's face won her many
a ride in a wagon, and many a cup of milk from humble women standing at
their cottage doors.

Now and then he got a day's work in the fields, and the farmer's wife
took care of little Grace, and washed her linen, and gave them both clean
straw in the barn to lie on, and a blanket to cover them. Once he fell in
with a harvest-home, and his fiddle earned him ten shillings, all in
sixpences. But on unlucky days he had to take his fiddle under his arm,
and carry his girl on his back: these unlucky days came so often that
still as he travelled his small pittance dwindled. Yet half-way on this
journey fortune smiled on him suddenly. It was in Derbyshire. He went a
little out of his way to visit his native place--he had left it at ten
years old. Here an old maid, his first cousin, received Grace with
rapture, and Hope pottered about all day, reviving his boyish
recollections of people and places. He had left the village ignorant; he
returned full of various knowledge; and so it was that in a certain
despised field, all thistles and docks and every known weed, which field
the tenant had condemned as a sour clay unfit for cultivation, William
Hope found certain strata and other signs which, thanks to his
mineralogical studies and practical knowledge, sent a sudden thrill all
through his frame. "Here's luck at last!" said he. "My child! my child!
our fortune is made."

The proprietor of this land, and indeed of the whole parish, was a
retired warrior, Colonel Clifford. Hope knew that very well, and hurried
to Clifford Hall, all on fire with his discovery.

He obtained an interview without any difficulty. Colonel Clifford, though
proud as Lucifer, was accessible and stiffly civil to humble folk. He was
gracious enough to Hope; but, when the poor fellow let him know he had
found signs of coal on his land, he froze directly; told him that two
gentlemen in that neighborhood had wasted their money groping the bowels
of the earth for coal, because of delusive indications on the surface of
the soil; and that for his part, even