"He has gone with all our unkindness on his head," she wailed, partially unconscious, no doubt, of what she said; "gone to meet his father, my poor lost brother, bearing to him the tale of his wrongs! Oh, if----" "Be silent, will you?" shrieked Chattaway. "Are you going mad?" Mrs. Chattaway covered her face with her hands, and leaned against the barrow on which her husband was sitting. Miss Diana Trevlyn, who had been gathering various particulars from the crowd, who had said a word of comfort--though it was little comfort they could listen to yet--to the miserable women, came up at this moment to Chattaway. "It was a very unhappy thing that you should have sent Rupert into the pit this morning," she said, her face wearing its most haughty expression. "Yes," he answered. "But I could not foresee what was about to happen. It--it might have been Cris. Had Cris been in the way at the time, and not Rupert, I should have despatched him." "Chattaway, I would give all my fortune to have him back again. I----" A strange commotion on the outskirts of the crowd attracted their attention, and Miss Diana brought her sentence to an abrupt conclusion, and turned sharply towards it, for the shouts bore the sound of triumph; and a few voices were half breaking into hurrahs. Strange sounds, in that awful death-scene! Who was this advancing towards them? The crowd had parted to give him place, and he came leaping to the centre, all haste and excitement--a fair, gentlemanly young man, his silken hair uncovered, his cheeks hectic with excitement. Mrs. Chattaway cried aloud with a joyful cry, and her husband's eyes and mouth slowly opened as though he saw a spectre. It was Rupert Trevlyn. Rupert, it appeared, had not been down the pit at all. Sufficiently obedient to Mr. Chattaway, but not obedient to the letter, Rupert, when he reached the pit's mouth, had seen the last of those men descending whom Chattaway had imperiously ordered down, and sent the message to Bean by him. His chief inducement was that he had just met an acquaintance who had come to tell him of a pony for sale--for Rupert, commissioned by Miss Trevlyn, had been making inquiries for one. It required little pressing to induce Rupert to abandon the office and Blackstone for some hours, and start off to see this pony. And that was where he had been. Mrs. Chattaway clasped her arms around his neck, in utter defiance of her husband's prejudices, unremembered then, and sobbed forth her emotion. "Why, Aunt Edith, you never thought I was one of them, did you? Bless you! I am never down the pit. I should not be likely to fall into such a calamity as that. Poor fellows! I must go and ascertain who was there." The crowd, finding Rupert safe, broke into a cheer, and a voice shouted--could it have been Mr. Daw's?--"Long live the heir! long live young Squire Trevlyn!" and the words were taken up and echoed in the air.