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Now at the hour when from the field some delver or ploughman goes gladly home to his hut, longing for his evening meal, and there on the threshold, all squalid with dust, bows his wearied knees, and, beholding his hands worn with toil, with many a curse reviles his belly; at that hour the heroes reached the homes of the Cianian land near the Arganthonian mount and the outfall of Cius.

"You shall not say such things of M'sieu Paddington! He is brave and good, while you you are a spy, an eavesdropper, a delver into the private affairs of others. I do not know what this trouble may be, which Miss Lawton is in, and I am sorry for her, that she should suffer, but I shall have nothing more to do with the case, nor with you, m'sieu! Au revoir!"

If you had not found me, I should have missed a happiness that falls to the lot of few a happiness of which all your science can never give you, you old delver, even an idea. I meant to tell mother and father first, but I feel to-night how much I owe to your brave, patient search, and I want your congratulations."

The human mind was, indeed, helpless to conceive such a First Cause in any form and lay prostrate before the Unknown, yet she herself was an enthusiastic delver into scientific hypothesis and the teachings of Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel had satisfied her intellect if they had failed to content her soul.

To suspect Shakespeare in his maturity of a superficial touch savours of paradox; yet he was surely in error when he attributed insensibility to the digger of the grave. But perhaps it is on Hamlet that the charge should lie; or perhaps the English sexton differs from the Scottish. The "goodman delver," reckoning up his years of office, might have at least suggested other thoughts.

After a similar lapse of time, may not our vaunted wisdom concerning the properties of plants look as ridiculous to the delver among our musty volumes? Indeed, it may, if we may judge by the discoveries and investigations of only the past fifty years.

That evening the squire and Mr Marston went over to the works to see how matters were progressing, to find all satisfactory, and the night passed quietly enough; but at breakfast the next morning, when some of the best of the tench appeared fried in butter, a messenger came over to see the engineer on his way to the town for the doctor, to announce that Hez Bargle, the big delver, who had been leader of the party who came over so fiercely about the attack upon Mr Marston, had been found that morning lying in the rough hovel where he slept alone, nearly dead.

The human mind was, indeed, helpless to conceive such a First Cause in any form and lay prostrate before the Unknown, yet she herself was an enthusiastic delver into scientific hypothesis and the teachings of Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel had satisfied her intellect if they had failed to content her soul.

And fortune smiled upon him as never before. His mills went day and night, stopping never except on Sabbaths. The ground seemed to give forth iron and lime wherever he dug for it. The town became the thriftiest settlement in the Allegheny valleys, and Jabel Blake was the earliest riser and the hardest delver in the State.

I went into some of their cottages on the estate which I visited, and was not in the least surprised to find them preferable in size, furniture, and all material comforts to the dwellings of most of our own agricultural laborers. Any comparison between the material comfort of a Kentucky slave and an English ditcher and delver would be preposterous.