"Yes, at last we tied a string to a boot, and got the water up that way," continued Solomon; "but our stomachs turned against it." "It was not so good as my punch," observed the landlord, parenthetically, and emptying his steaming glass. "More dark days came and went, though, of course, we could not tell how many; then, all of a sudden, we heard a human voice, inquiring: 'How many are you?' 'We are three,' was our reply. We had not the courage even then to own that one of us had already been taken; death seemed still so near to us. The aperture which had thus let in the world upon us was also very small." "And what was it you asked for first?" interrupted the landlord, with a nod at Richard, as much as to say: "Listen now; this is curious." "What we wanted was light. 'Light above all things!' was our cry. But our deliverers could give us but little of that, for they had scarcely any themselves. They had been working in a narrow gallery, by means of five inclined driftways, at each of which only one man could ply his pick at a time, and where light and air could only be procured artificially. The coal was carried out in baskets as fast as it was hewn out: the atmosphere in which they thus toiled like giants, naked to the waist, was almost suffocating; yet, under these conditions, they had literally effected in four days, to save our lives, what it would have taken them four weeks to do, had they been working by the piece for wages. They had even been compelled to put up ventilators, and their lamps would only burn when close to these. They gave us broth through a tin pipe; but almost another day elapsed before the hole was large enough for them to carry us through it in their arms." "And there was nobody else saved, was there?" inquired the landlord, with a triumphant look. "There was not," said Solomon, expressing his tobacco smoke very slowly. "Out of a hundred and thirteen men who had been caught by the flood in Dunston, we two were the sole survivors." Many other stories of the like sort had Solomon to tell, and for not one of them, was he indebted to his imagination. His experience of life had been remarkable, and it had impressed itself upon his character. His will was as strong as that of Trevethick, but he had less of caution; and he was at the same time both plodding and audacious. It would not be well, thought Richard occasionally, to have either of these men for an enemy; and he was right. Unhappily, it was impossible to win Harry without a quarrel with, at least, one of them, and rather than lose her he was prepared to defy them both. If he could but have lifted a corner of the curtain that veils the future--well, even then, so mad was he by this time with the love of her, that he would almost have defied them still. CHAPTER XVI. SPRING-TIDE.