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.
And Mr. Chattaway? If you want me to describe his emotions to you, I cannot do it. They were of a mixed nature. We must not go so far as to say he regretted to see Rupert back in life; felt no satisfaction at his escape; but with his reappearance all the old fears returned. They returned tenfold from the very fact of his short immunity from them, and the audacious words of the crowd turned his face livid. In conjunction with the yet more audacious words previously spoken by the stranger and the demonstrative behaviour of his wife, they were as a sudden blow to Mr. Chattaway.
Those shouters saw his falling countenance, his changed look, and drew their own conclusions. "Ah! he'd put away the young heir if he could," they whispered one to another. "But he haven't got shut of him this time."
No; Mr. Chattaway certainly had not.
"God has been merciful to your nephew," interposed the peaceful voice of Mr. Lloyd, drawing near. "He has been pleased to save him, though He has seen fit to take others. We know not why it should be—some struck down, others spared. His ways are not as our ways."
They lay there, a long line of them, and the minister pointed with his finger as he spoke. Most of the faces looked calm and peaceful. Oh! were they ready? Had they lived to make God their friend? Trusting in Christ their Saviour? My friends, this sudden call comes to others as well as to miners: it behoves us all to be ready for it.
As the day drew on, the excitement did not lessen; and Mr. Chattaway almost forgot the hurt, which he would have made a great deal of at another time. But the ankle was considerably swollen and inflamed, giving him pain still, and it caused him to quit the scene for home earlier than he might otherwise have done.