"Good Heaven!" muttered Audley, "the poor girl cannot be here. Should she have fallen down the shaft!"—was his next terrible thought.
"Are ee saafe, sur?" cried Treherne, peering down from above.
"All right, old fellow—stop lowering and make fast the rope; I am just at the place, and a horrid one it is."
Ere he entered it, and cast off the cradle by which he had descended, he could hear in the obscurity beyond the surging or gurgling sound of the tide, at the lower end; and a nervous chill that he might find Sybil drowned, came over his heart.
"Well, by Jove!" he muttered; "of all the places in this world, to search for a young lady, who would think of this—down the shaft of a devilish old copper mine! I have seen some queer things in India, but this out-herods them all!"
Carrying the lantern so that its light should precede and guide his steps, he had barely gone twenty paces, when he discerned something white amid the dense gloom. Within but a few feet of the still encroaching water, a female figure was lying on a shelf of rock, from which she started into a half sitting posture, and gazed upward at him, with a wild and startled expression, in which hope and fear, joy and wonder, were singularly mingled.
She was that Sybil Devereaux of whom he was in search; her dress, a white pique, all soiled, bedrabbled and wet, her fine dark hair dishevelled and sodden, her hat and veil gone, and her whole aspect forlorn and pitiable.
"I am saved!" she exclaimed in a wailing and excited voice; "I thank Heaven—I thank kind God that you are come to me; but how—and who are you that have had the courage——"
"Audley—Audley Trevelyan—don't you know me, Miss Devereaux?" said he, as he placed the lantern on a rock, and raised her tenderly in his arms.
"Oh Audley!" she exclaimed, and her head fell upon his shoulder, for she was weak as a child and past all exertion. She had never called him by his Christian name before, and while he felt his heart swell with a new emotion of pleasure, he ventured tenderly to kiss her cheek, and then he became aware how cold and chill it was. She seemed scarcely conscious of the act, though she said in a broken voice,