‘Are you really going, Mr. Restormel?’ asked Gundred, without paying further heed to Jim’s protests or Jim’s disappointment. She saw in a second how brilliantly God had answered her prayers for help. Long Kern was a small but deadly rift in the limestone of the hill above, which dropped three hundred feet of narrow shaft sheer down to unfathomable caverns below. Gundred saw clearly that the whole problem of her life was to be solved by a miracle. For Heaven may make a miracle out of any particularly happy coincidence. And what coincidence could possibly be more happy, more miraculous than this? For God clearly meant to destroy Ivor Restormel underground. Ivor, meanwhile, declared that he was eagerly looking forward to the exploration. The Rovers, about a dozen of them, were to make the descent at midday, and meant to stay in the caves down below until they had unravelled, as far as possible, the labyrinth of their passages. As for precautions and methods, they were to use rope-ladders and guiding wires, so that no real risk of any sort could be anticipated. Gundred listened with a wise smile. She knew better. Ivor Restormel might take as many precautions as he pleased; nothing could avail him against the combined weight of Gundred’s prayers and Heaven’s attention to them. This scheme of his was quite obviously the direct inspiration of the Powers above, working in Ivor to his destruction, as they had worked so many years ago for the fatal hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Egypt. Gundred blandly acquiesced, and lent an unusually pleasant countenance to the young man’s exposition of his plans. As he was so evidently doomed, she might fairly relax the righteousness of her wrath against him. Even for one merciful moment she thought of interposing, of saving Ivor’s life by deprecating his scheme. But the moment passed--she saw how irreverent it would be to counter Heaven’s design. And to oppose Ivor’s plan would necessarily be to oppose Heaven’s also. So Gundred piously resigned everything into God’s hands, and stood aside to let matters take their course. Jim, meanwhile, was pressing her with pleas that he also might be allowed to join the party. His father, too, did not seem disinclined to grant his request. Gundred returned briskly to the immediate present. No, no; this complicating element must on no account be introduced. She could trust Heaven to look after Ivor Restormel when once he was inside Long Kern, but she was not at all inclined to trust It to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty, when it came to arranging the rock-fall or the sudden rush of water which she anticipated with a certain holy complacency. All Ivor’s companions would almost certainly perish with him. On no account, then, must her own precious child run any risk of being included in the Evil One’s condemnation. She looked at Jim, so eager, so young, so brilliant.