"Ishmael Medway!" shouted half a dozen voices, joyously. "He's the lad, if there is one."
He felt himself pushed forward to the far end of the cave, where the light was strongest. The thin, stunted, undersized lad, in his tattered clothing, and with his mournful face, stood in front of the squire, and of his old enemy, who gazed at him half in shame and half in hope.
"Mother's sent me," he said, touching his old ragged cap to the squire. "She's dyin', and I don't s'pose as I shall ever see her again; but she couldn't die happy with the little lad lost in the pit. And mother says if I forgive him here, God 'll forgive me, and take me, some day, somewhere, to the place where she's goin'! I slept here last night, and I heard the ground give way. Don't set any picks at work."
Ishmael did not wait for an answer, but lying down on the ground, crept through the narrow, winding tunnel he had often crawled through as a boy. He called back to them when he had reached the shaft, where he could stand upright, and they saw that he had struck a light; but presently all sound and sign of him was lost, and Nutkin and the squire rose from their knees where they had been watching and listening, and the fitful light of the lanterns shone upon the tears in their eyes.
"I'll make a man of that lad," said the squire, in a broken voice.
"God Almighty bring him and Willie safe back," cried Nutkin, sinking down on his knees again, "and I'll treat him as my own son, I will; as long as ever I live! So help me, God!"
So silent for some time was the crowd of villagers now thronging the cave, that they could hear the heavy splashes of water falling from the rain-sodden earth into the little pools collected below in the subterranean alleys of the old pit; and once a low rumbling like distant thunder, telling of the earth giving way in one of the many galleries, made them hold their breath in speechless dread, and look anxiously into one another's faces. But, as if Ishmael too had heard it, and wished to reassure them, there came the sound of his voice, calling back to them from the hidden pathways.
"God bless him!" exclaimed the squire, a smile for a moment crossing his anxious and clouded face.
"Ay!" cried Chipchase. "He was as good a lad as ever breathed before he went to gaol for stealing them pheasant's eggs; and old Ruth, his mother, you might trust her in a room full of golden guineas. She's as good an old soul as ever lived. Ishmael said she was a-dying, didn't he, sir?"
"Yes," answered the squire.