left me, nor I him, until his death three years later. He taught me many valuable points in practical mining, and I think his rough but kindly care was all that saved me from insanity during those years.
"After his death I brooded over my grief till I became nearly frenzied. I could not banish the thought that but for my rashness and foolishness in taking her from her home my wife might still have been living. To myself I seemed little short of a murderer. I left the camp and wandered, night and day, afar into the mountains. I came to this mountain on which we are sitting and climbed nearly to the top. God was there, but, like Jacob of old, 'I knew it not.' But something seemed to speak to me out of the infinite silence, calming my frenzied brain and soothing my troubled soul. I sat there till the stars appeared, and then I sank into a deep, peaceful sleep—the first in years. When I awoke the sun was shining in my face, and, though the old pain still throbbed, I had a sense of new strength with which to bear it. I ate of the food I carried with me and drank from a mountain stream—the same that trickles past us now, only nearer its source. The place fascinated me; I dared not leave it, and I spent the day in wandering up and down the rocks. My steps were guided to the mine I showed you to-day. I saw the indications of richness there, and, overturning the earth with my pick, found gold among the very grassroots. Then followed the life of which I have already given you an outline.
"For a while I worked in pain and anguish, but gradually, in the solitude of the mountains, my spirit found peace; against their infinity my life with its burden dwindled to an atom, and from the lesson of their centuries of silent waiting I gathered strength and fortitude to await my appointed time.
"But after a time God spoke to me and bade me go forth from my solitude into the world, to comfort other sorrowing souls as I had been comforted. From that time I have travelled almost constantly. I have no home; I wish none. I want to bring comfort and help to as many of earth's sorrowing, sinning children as possible; but when the old wound bleeds afresh and the pain becomes more than I can bear I flee as a bird to my mountain for balm and healing. Do you wonder, my son, that the place is sacred to me? Do you understand my love for you in bringing you here?"
Darrell sat with bowed head, speechless, but one hand went out to Mr. Britton, which the latter clasped in both his own.
When at last he raised his head he exclaimed, "Strange! but your story has wrung my soul! It seems in some inexplicable way a part of my very life!"
"Our souls seem united by some mystic tie—I cannot explain what, unless it be that in some respects our sufferings have been similar."
"Mine have been as nothing to yours," Darrell replied. A moment later he added:
"I feel as one in a dream; what you have told me has taken such hold upon me."