It was the voice of the General hailing him now.
"Here we come, sir," replied Audley, as he fastened the rope cradle securely round his body and courageously took Sybil in his arms. It was no doubt delightful to hold her in an embrace so close, and to feel her clinging to him, but a thrill of intense anxiety passed over all his nerves, and it seemed as if the hair of his head bristled up, when he found himself swinging at the end of a rope over that dreadful abyss, down which the lantern, as it chanced to fall from his hand, vanished as if into the bowels of the earth, for the lower level of that old mine, was far below the sea. As for poor Sybil, she felt only a terror that amounted to a species of torpor—a numbness of all sense.
"Now pull together, my booys!" cried the cheerful voice of Michael Treherne, "one, two—one, two—ho and here they come out of the knacked bal!" for so the Cornish miners designate an abandoned mine, as it is among his class, and in the mines, that words of the old language linger.
And in less than a minute, Audley and Sybil were at the surface and in the grasp of strong hands that placed them safely on terra firma, when, overcome by all she had endured, the former immediately fainted.
"The poor child is as wet as a quilquin" (a frog), said Treherne with commiseration.
"She requires instant attention," said the General kindly; "let her own servants take her at once to your cottage, Treherne, as it is the nearest place in this stormy night. See to this, Audley, while I hurry down to Porthellick and relieve the anxiety of her mother. Give orders to have the carriage sent there for her. By the way, Audley, is not this the girl that Rose chaffs you about?"
"The same, sir," replied Trevelyan, whose heightened colour was unseen in the dark.
"How strange! Rose is such a quiz, you will never hear the end of this."
"She is the daughter of an officer—a Captain Devereaux."
"I have never met him—of what corps?"