more to him. Not once did his faith fail him. Not once did he doubt that the white fires of this star, which none else could see, were miraculously kindled and charged with some deep significance for him, with the vouchsafed will of God. For were not stars messengers in the olden time? Had he not read of one, supremely blessed and brilliant, which had led men, the wisest men, to the cradled Christ? As he lay back in the dense darkness, with the gathering clouds outside, and the air freighted with the sense of black noiseless invisible wings of creatures of ill favor and ill omen, he seemed to have a vision of that guiding star,--not a chill splendid crystalline glitter like his own, high, high in the sky, but low down in the dark east, and of a soft supernal silver sheen in the purple shadowy mist above the shadowy purple hills of Judea, that stretched out in ever-lengthening perspectives, as it fared on and slowly on its mystic way, for Bethlehem might still be far to seek. And suddenly, with a start, Larrabee became aware that it was a real light at which he was gazing far down in the Lost Time mine. He had slept he knew not how long, nor in what danger, for the lantern whose starry lustre shone so far in the dark cavernous depths was swinging in the hands of one of two men who must have passed him as he lay dreaming and unconscious. He hardly dared move at first, so far those slanting, divergent rays extended from the white focus into the darkness. He lay still, struggling for a moment with the idea of the traditional spectres of the place, whose grisly renown had served to make it so solitary. It was the lantern which proved so redoubtable an exorcist. The sight of the little mundane contrivance appealed to his logical faculty as no mere theory of the impossibility of spectres could have done. He lifted himself cautiously on his elbow, and gazed down the vistas of the gloomy place with a suspicious, inquisitive worldly pulse beating in every vein. These were men in truth; and what was their mission here? One of them was singularly gesticulatory of manner. The other slouched heavily. It was the latter who had just lighted the lantern, for he was evidently throwing away a match, an article which the Lost Time store had made common in the Cove. Suddenly they were joined by a third figure, somehow detached from the darkness, for Larrabee could hardly have said whence he had approached, and who turned with a light, lithe motion, swinging to his shoulder an implement which the thickset man had handed him. It was a pick. How often Larrabee had heard its vibrations ring through these storied depths while he threaded the dark tunnel to the still, and shivered at the thought of the two dead miners digging and digging the graves these thirty years for their bones which only the waters had buried! The lantern swayed, the shadows all flickered, the group was on the move. Larrabee sprang hastily to his feet to follow.