upon the ground. She got up to look at it.
"And yet I don't know. This has not
been broken very long. The wood is quite
fresh where it gave way. Here are footsteps
too.—O Rachael!"

She ran back, and caught her round the
neck. Rachael had already started up.

"What is the matter?"

"I don't know. There is a hat lying in
the grass."

They went forward together. Rachael took
it up, shaking from head to foot. She broke
into a passion of tears and lamentations:
Stephen Blackpool was written in his own
hand on the inside.

"O the poor lad, the poor lad! He has
been made away with. He is lying murdered
here!"

"Is there—has the hat any blood upon
it? " Sissy faltered.

They were afraid to look; but they did
examine it, and found no mark of violence,
inside or out. It had been lying there some
days, for rain and dew had stained it, and
the mark of its shape was on the grass where
it had fallen. They looked fearfully about
them, without moving, but could see nothing
more. "Rachael," Sissy whispered, "I will
go on a little by myself."

She had unclasped her hand, and was in
the act of stepping forward, when Rachael
caught her in both arms with a scream that
resounded over the wide landscape. Before
them, at their very feet, was the brink of a
black ragged chasm, hidden by the thick grass.
They sprang back, and fell upon their knees,
each hiding her face upon the other's neck.

"O, my good God! He's down there!
Down there!"  At first this, and her terrific
screams, were all that could be got from
Rachael, by any tears, by any prayers, by any
representations, by any means. It was
impossible to hush her; and it was deadly
necessary to hold her, or she would have flung
herself down the shaft.

"Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for
the love of Heaven not these dreadful cries!
Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of
Stephen!"

By an earnest repetition of this entreaty,
poured out in all the agony of such a moment,
Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and to
look at her with a tearless face of stone.

"Rachael, Stephen may be living. You
wouldn't leave him lying maimed at the
bottom of this dreadful p!ace, a moment, if you
could bring help to him!"

"No no no!"

"Don't stir from here, for his sake! Let
me go and listen."

She shuddered to approach the pit; but she
crept towards it on her hands and knees, and
called to him as loud as she could call. She
listened, but no sound replied. She called
again and listened; still no answering sound.
She did this, twenty, thirty, times. She took
a clod of earth from the broken ground
where he had stumbled, and threw it in.
She could not hear it fall.

The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness
but a few minutes ago, almost carried
despair to her brave heart, as she rose and
looked all round her, seeing no help. "Rachael,
we must lose not a moment. We must go in
different directions, seeking aid. You shall
go by the way we have come, and I will go
forward by the path. Tell any one you see,
and every one, what has happened. Think
of Stephen, think of Stephen!"

She knew by Rachael's face that she might
trust her now. After standing for a moment
to see her running, wringing her hands as she
ran, she turned and went upon her own
search; she stopped at the hedge to tie her
shawl there as a guide to the place, then
threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she had
never run before.

Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven's name! Don't
stop for breath. Run, run! Quickening herself
by carrying such entreaties in her
thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane
to lane, and place to place, as she had never
run before; until she came to a shed by an
engine-house, where two men lay in the
shade asleep on straw.

First to wake them, and next to tell them,
all so wild and breathless as she was, what
had brought her there, were difficulties; but
they no sooner understood her than their
spirits were on fire like hers. One of the men
was in a drunken slumber, but on his
comrade's shouting to him that a man had fallen
down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to
a pool of dirty water, put his head in it, and
came back sober.

With these two men she ran to another
half-a-mile further, and with that one to
another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a
horse was found; and she got another man
to ride for life or death to the railroad, and
send a message to Louisa, which she wrote
and gave him. By this time a whole village
was up; and windlasses, ropes, poles, buckets,
candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were
fast collecting and being brought into one
place, to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.

It seemed now hours and hours since she
had left the lost man lying in the grave where
he had been buried alive. She could not bear
to remain away from it any longer—it was
like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly
back, accompanied by half-a-dozen laborers,
including the drunken man whom the news
had sobered, and who was the best man of all.
When they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they
found it as lonely as she had left it. The
men called and listened as she had done, and
examined the edge of the chasm, and settled
how it had happened, and then sat down to
wait until the implements they wanted should
come up.

Every sound of insects in the air, every
stirring of the leaves, every whisper among
these men, made Sissy tremble, for she