was almost suffocating; yet, under these conditions, they had literally effected in four days, to save our lives, what it would have taken them four weeks to do, had they been working by the piece for wages.  They had even been compelled to put up ventilators, and their lamps would only burn when close to these.  They gave us broth through a tin pipe; but almost another day elapsed before the hole was large enough for them to carry us through it in their arms.”

“And there was nobody else saved, was there?” inquired the landlord, with a triumphant look.

“There was not,” said Solomon, expressing his tobacco smoke very slowly.  “Out of a hundred and thirteen men who had been caught by the flood in Dunston, we two were the sole survivors.”

Many other stories of the like sort had Solomon to tell, and for not one of them, was he indebted to his imagination.  His experience of life had been remarkable, and it had impressed itself upon his character.  His will was as strong as that of Trevethick, but he had less of caution; and he was at the same time both plodding and audacious.

It would not be well, thought Richard occasionally, to have either of these men for an enemy; and he was right.  Unhappily, it was impossible to win Harry without a quarrel with, at least, one of them, and rather than lose her he was prepared to defy them both.  If he could but have lifted a corner of the curtain that veils the future—­well, even then, so mad was he by this time with the love of her, that he would almost have defied them still.

CHAPTER XVI.

SPRING-TIDE.

There is a beauty in woman that takes the stranger, and another the changeful charm of which wins its way deeper and deeper daily into the heart of man; but in the person of Harry Trevethick these two beauties were combined.  Richard thought he had never seen any face half so fair as that which shone upon him through the mist on the first day when he came to Gethin; and when he had dwelt there for weeks he was of the same opinion still.  Harry was innocent, tender-hearted, and gay, and so far the expression of her features told you truth; but it also told you more than that, which you must needs believe, though it was not the fact.  Her face was not the index of her mind in all respects; it was rather like the exquisite and costly dial-plate of a time-piece the works of which are indifferent.  Her air was spiritual; her voice thrilled your being with its sweet tone; her eyes were full of earnest tenderness; but she was weak of purpose, vacillating rather than impulsive, credulous, and given (not from choice, but fear) to dissimulation.  That last fault Richard willingly forgave her, since it worked to his advantage; and to the others he would have been more than human had he not been blind.  For Harry loved him.  She had never said so; he had never asked her to say so; but it was taken for granted on both sides.  They were thrown much together, for Dunloppel—­a treasure-house, which proved richer and richer the more it yielded—­monopolized the attention of both Trevethick and Solomon; they were in high good-humor, and not at all disposed for quarrel or suspicion.  Harry had always been the mistress of her own movements, and she went, as usual, whither she liked, and Richard went with her.