The next instant her heart gave a great plunge, and then seemed to stand still. She was not alone. A man in a further recess appeared suddenly, approaching cautiously. He evidently had not seen her. Her entrance into the place had preceded his appearance only by a few seconds. He was watching the rain with intense interest. She would have said that he had been apprised of it by the rise of the water within. He bestowed an eager, careful, calculating scrutiny upon the stream below the high shadowy point where he stood; then he looked toward the portal where the descending sheets of rain cut off all glimpse of the world without. He was turning away, with the furtive, skulking, cautious air that had characterized his approach, when his eyes fell upon her. He dropped out of sight as if he had been shot. She sat there, silent, trembling, her eyes fixed upon the spot where he had disappeared, her heart beating wildly. She heard the flow of the stream below, its volume and momentum continually increasing, and the foaming turmoil where the currents met the dash of the rain at the outlet of the mine; now and again she was conscious that lightning flashed through the gray and white descending torrents without, and lit up this dreary subterranean recess with its uncanny glare for a space, till distance annulled its power, and she heard the thunder roar. But she did not withdraw her eyes, and she wondered if he had known her in that short moment as she had recognized him. For it was Jack Espey. It seemed so long while she sat there, waiting for some sign, or token, or further intimation, that she might have thought the apparition a mere illusion, had she ever heard enough of the tricks of the imagination to learn to doubt her senses. She was trembling still, although her voice was calm enough as at last she called his name. "Jack Espey!" the echoes cried out, as promptly as if it were a familiar sound and long ago conned. They fell to silence gradually. She did not call again, but, with her slow and composed manner, she waited for him to answer. When he finally approached, apparently ascending an incline from depths below, he met her intent gaze fixed upon him; but she seemed to him as impassive and as unmoved of aspect as if this were a daily occurrence in her life. "I war in hopes ye didn't know me, Julia," he said, dully sad, as he came up near her. He stood leaning his elbow on one of the shelves of rock, looking up at her, mechanically shielding himself behind the jagged ledges from observation without, although it might seem naught could stand in the storm that raged beyond. His plight was forlorn. His clothes were worn and torn, and miry with clay; it adhered in flakes and smears to his long boots, incongruously spurred. His face was lined and white. His hat was pushed far back on his black hair, as of yore, and his long-lashed grayish-blue eyes had an appealing look which she had not seen before. "What fur ye wished I wouldn't know ye?"