[A Perilous Secret by Charles Reade]@TWC D-Link book
A Perilous Secret

CHAPTER XXIII
12/17

No, no.

I forgot, they are not swans, they are ships sailing to the bright land you told me of, where there is no suffering and no sorrow." Then Hope, to his horror, began to see that this must be the very hallucination of which he had read, a sweet illusion of green fields and crystal water, which often precedes actual death by thirst and starvation.

He trembled, he prayed secretly to God to spare her, and not to kill his new-found child, his darling, in his arms.
By-and-by Grace spoke again, but this time her senses were clear; "How dark it's grown!" she said.

"Ah, we are back again in that awful mine." Then, with the patient fortitude of a woman when once she thinks the will of the Almighty is declared, she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and she said, soothingly, "Dear father, bow to Heaven's will;" then she held up both her feeble arms to him--"kiss me, father--FOR WE ARE TO DIE!" With these firm and patient words, she laid her sweet head upon the ground, and hoped and feared no more.
But the man could not bow like the woman.

He kissed her as she bade him, and laid her gently down; but after that he sprang wildly to his feet in a frenzy, and raged aloud, as his daughter could no longer hear him.
"No, no," he cried, "this thing can not be, they have had seven days to get to us.
"Ah, but there are mountains and rocks of earth and coal piled up between us.


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