He sprang with one
fearless bound down to the coal-truck, and caught up his wife in his
arms, and held her to his panting bosom. Ropes, ladder, everything--and
they were saved; while the corpse of the assassin whirled round and round
in the subsiding eddies of the black water, and as that water ran away
into the mine, lay, coated with mud, at the feet of those who had saved
his innocent victims.
CHAPTER XXIV.
STRANGE COMPLICATIONS.
Exert all the powers of your mind, and conceive, if you can, what that
mother felt whose only son sickened, and, after racking her heart with
hopes and fears, died before her eyes, and was placed in his coffin and
carried to his rest. Yet One in the likeness of a man bade the bearers
stand still, then, with a touch, made the coffin open, the dead come
back, blooming with youth and health, and handed him to his mother.
That picture no mortal mind can realize; but the effort will take you
so far as this: you may imagine what Walter Clifford felt when, almost
at the climax of despair, he received from that living tomb the good
and beautiful creature who was the light of his eyes and the darling of
his heart.
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