“I see!” she repeated.

It seemed strange to her that Mr. Scales should be a Wesleyan—­ just like herself.  She would have been sure that he was ‘Church.’  Her notions of Wesleyanism, with her notions of various other things, were sharply modified.

“Now tell me about you,” Mr. Scales suggested.

“Oh!  I’m nothing!” she burst out.

The exclamation was perfectly sincere.  Mr. Scales’s disclosures concerning himself, while they excited her, discouraged her.

“You’re the finest girl I’ve ever met, anyhow,” said Mr. Scales with gallant emphasis, and he dug his stick into the soft ground.

She blushed and made no answer.

They walked on in silence, each wondering apprehensively what might happen next.

Suddenly Mr. Scales stopped at a dilapidated low brick wall, built in a circle, close to the side of the road.

“I expect that’s an old pit-shaft,” said he.

“Yes, I expect it is.”

He picked up a rather large stone and approached the wall.

“Be careful!” she enjoined him.

“Oh!  It’s all right,” he said lightly.  “Let’s listen.  Come near and listen.”

She reluctantly obeyed, and he threw the stone over the dirty ruined wall, the top of which was about level with his hat.  For two or three seconds there was no sound.  Then a faint reverberation echoed from the depths of the shaft.  And on Sophia’s brain arose dreadful images of the ghosts of miners wandering for ever in subterranean passages, far, far beneath.  The noise of the falling stone had awakened for her the secret terrors of the earth.  She could scarcely even look at the wall without a spasm of fear.

“How strange,” said Mr. Scales, a little awe in his voice, too, “that that should be left there like that!  I suppose it’s very deep.”

“Some of them are,” she trembled.

“I must just have a look,” he said, and put his hands on the top of the wall.

“Come away!” she cried.

“Oh!  It’s all right!” he said again, soothingly.  “The wall’s as firm as a rock.”  And he took a slight spring and looked over.

She shrieked loudly.  She saw him at the distant bottom of the shaft, mangled, drowning.  The ground seemed to quake under her feet.  A horrible sickness seized her.  And she shrieked again.  Never had she guessed that existence could be such pain.

He slid down from the wall, and turned to her.  “No bottom to be seen!” he said.  Then, observing her transformed face, he came close to her, with a superior masculine smile.  “Silly little thing!” he said coaxingly, endearingly, putting forth all his power to charm.

He perceived at once that he had miscalculated the effects of his action.  Her alarm changed swiftly to angry offence.  She drew back with a haughty gesture, as if he had intended actually to touch her.  Did he suppose, because she chanced to be walking with him, that he had the right to address her familiarly, to tease her, to call her ‘silly little thing’ and to put his face against hers?  She resented his freedom with quick and passionate indignation.