This Trevethick must be an ingenious
fellow, and a long-sighted one, no doubt. It was he who applied to
Parson Whymper for a lease of the old mine, if I remember right. Perhaps
the chaplain may help me to get it him, for I owe him something for his
daughter's sake. The idea of his having such a daughter! What rubbish is
this we artists talk of birth and beauty! Neither in life nor on canvas
have I ever seen one so fair as this girl." He meditated for a moment,
then cried out, angrily: "Heaven curse me, if I harm her! What an
ungrateful villain should I be! If there be a Gehenna, and but one man
in it, I should deserve to be that man!"
Then he began to climb the rock. He did not tarry this time for breath
nor shelter, though the wind had no whit abated, but trod right on till
he reached the spot where the catastrophe which had been so near fatal
to him had occurred. "It was a narrow escape," mused he, looking down
upon the place, not without a slight shudder. "What odd things come into
the head when Death is whispering in the ear! If it had not been for my
fair guide, where should I have been by this time? Beneath the sea, for
certain. But what else? How strange it seems that if there is any
'else,' no one, from the beginning of time till now, of all the millions
who have experienced it, should have come back to tell us! And yet there
was a man who came back from the grave once.
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