with Rosaline Bell?—and did you really love her?" Easy words they seemed to say; but Daisy could not get them out in her terrible emotion.

And so, they parted, and she had not spoken. For the hour was late already, and she feared to remain out longer. And Frank went home unsuspecting and unconscious.

It was on the following morning that certain rumours were afloat in Trennach. They had arisen the previous day: at least, two or three people professed to have then heard them. The miners congregated in groups to discuss the news; Float the chemist and other tradesmen stood at their shop-doors, exchanging words on the subject with the passers-by. It was said that Josiah Bell was lying in the Bottomless Shaft. Instead of having walked off in some mysterious manner, to return some day as mysteriously—as his wife believed—he was lying dead in that deep pit on the Bare Plain.