Therefore child, and therefore soldier brave,
Therefore priest, whose cell is nigh his grave,
Love, ye three, who cross the moor by night,
All who brave its hardships in the might
                     Of true belief.

           THE COST OF COAL.

IN the midst of a bare and barren country
that offered nothing attractive to the eye, and
possessed every element that could impress the
imagination with a sense of gloom—in the
midst of a country stretched out in an
interminable flat, with here and there some dark
gully or ravine, or some little wood brown and
wintry and leafless—there stood before me a
kind of tower of rough grey stone, of mean
altitude, and surrounded by many dingy sheds and
outbuildings.

The tower itself was approached on one side
by a high and narrow wooden bridge, of somewhat
slender construction, which connected the
great stone building with a large mound or
hillock at a little distance, and on the other by
a flight of rude stone steps. The tower was
surmounted by a strange and sinister apparatus
of wheels and ropes and beams. This
apparatus, raised high into the air, looked like
the machinery of a rack, and imparted to this
building the look of a great lonely torture-
chamber, or a place of execution. The wheels
and the ropes which went round them were in
motion, but from time to time they would stop
for a little while, and presently, as if at some
given signal, would turn and work again,
revolving noiselessly and smoothly.

The inside of that tower-like building, with
the grim apparatus above it, was the end
and destination of the journey which I had
undertaken, and hardly pausing to note what
is here set down, lest that dogged resolution
which I felt should weaken or change, I
made straight for the flight of steps which I
have mentioned as giving access to the building.
There were some men stationed on those steps
to guard the place from intruders; but I had a
certain pass-word, which I spoke as they
advanced to meet me, and when they heard it they
stood aside and let me by.

There is a kind of half-averted glance with
which one looks towards a thing that one dreads
to see, approaching it with hesitating eyes.
Just thus I approach, the mention of what is to
come with a half-reluctance, and write with an
unwilling hand and with a hesitating pen.

I paused on a wooden stage, across which
a bitter wind was driving keenly. There
yawned at my feet a great black abyss,
fenced in by a wooden rail. Above the abyss,
and at a great elevation over my head, I
saw what I had seen before from below, the two
rack-like wheels. They were still revolving
slowly and noiselessly, and the sliding ropes
which passed over them were lost in the great
black chasm at my feet. Doubtless the wheels
were so arranged as to lower or to raise those
ropes at pleasure, and now they were raising
them, silently, smoothly, and the spiral twist
of the cordage was coming up out of the darkness,
strand by strand, and inch by inch. There
were two ropes, one thicker and whiter than the
other, and they were both ascending.

What a depth that dark hole must be that
those ropes should go on rising and rising out
of it, and still the line not come to an end! I
watched it long, and it rose and rose still, and no
end seemed possible. So I drew close to the
mouth of the great black hole, and holding
firmly to a wooden rail which guarded it—holding
on against the Demon which said "Jump
in"—I looked down into the darkness, and so
waited straining my eyes, and saying "No," as
the Demon said "Jump in."

At last, as I watched, there was a sudden
change in one of the ropes. I think it was
turned into an iron chain; and in the next
moment two strange-looking and darkly-clad
men appeared, clinging to the chain. Swiftly
they rose up out of the blackness into the light.
But this was not all. There was more of a
burden hanging to the rope than this, for the
chain was tightened that hung below the two
darkly-clad men, and something more was rising
out of the dark hole which another turn of the
wheel would bring to light.

The end of the chain that hung below was
clasped and girt about the bodies of two dead
men. It was grappled about their waists, and so
their heads had fallen back, their faces were
turned up to the sky, their hair streaming down
in ragged locks, their arms and legs swung
helplessly and heavily, and the weight of death was
in every limb and in every part of every limb.
This ghastly apparition rose out of the black
abyss, and it was not a dream. While I was
looking, the second rope turned into a chain, and
one strangely-clad man, with a pale face, clung
to it. Below him there hung grappled to the
end of the chain a single corpse, with streaming
locks and upturned face, like the others, and
with powerless limbs that hung down as if the
darkness claimed them, and was loth to give
them up. This was not a dream either.

I left the platform chilled to the soul, and
with a blank and sickening heart; and descending
again the stone steps, I passed round the
tower-like building to its other side, and looked
up to where the high and long viaduct of wood
was to be seen bridging across the space
between the tower and the great mound or hillock
of which I have spoken before. I saw that
at the farther end of it, and all about the
mound, and on the flat ground beneath, was
gathered a great concourse of pale and silent
people, who all looked towards the tower and
towards the high and slender viaduct or bridge.
While I waited, and looked with them in
the same direction, I saw a low truck pushed
out from the tower and wheeled swiftly across
the bridge, and on that truck was a black
coffin. Presently a tall and gaunt figure of
very strange appearance, with long hair and
beard floating out on the cold wind, came after
the coffin from within the tower, and he leaned