"In three quarters of an hour we shall be there, if you come along quickly."

"Three quarters of an hour! Why, I thought the whole thing would only take us ten minutes," I said in dismay.

66 'You will be for two hours in the mine, at least," the man replied; "and a good deal longer if you don't come quickly."

There was a threatening tone in his voice that I did not like, and turning to Ada, I implored her to come back while there was yet time. "I dare not propose it," she answered in English. "Think how wild he would be at having lost so much time! I only hope this is the mine, and not some horrible lonely place, known only to himself, into which he is taking us."

In spite of the oppressive heat of the place, I felt a cold shudder run through me, at hearing my own fears thus put into words. As though knowing by intuition that we were thinking of turning back, the man pushed on more quickly. I was at my wits' end. "Are there many men working in the mine at present?" I asked, desperately clinging to my last hope.

"There are none."

with a sort of desperate fascination, we walked on, the air getting heavier and more difficult to breathe every moment.

"Do you ever have explosions here?" I asked, to break the horrid silence which had settled down upon us after my last vain endeavour to assert myself.

The guide turned round, and with a leer pointed to his disfigured face. "An explosion six years ago," he said; "before then I was considered handsome." This was added with such a fiendish grin that I decided we had better keep clear of personalities, and hastened to ask what had caused the explosion. "The mine was not properly ventilated, and the gas ignited," he explained. "But since then a great many improvements have been made, and there is no longer any fear of an accident. The air is very good now."

For

I was glad he found it so. my part, I should have thought another explosion was just about due: but I suppose our ideas of good ventilation and a miner's are necessarily somewhat different.

We had now come to a place intersected with pipes, which carried the briny fluid from the mine down to the works at Bex. The guide called a halt, and holding up his torch pointed to a little stone cistern filled with yellowish-looking liquid. "Taste it," he said, dipping a very black finger into the beverage and conveying it to his mouth. Afraid of disobeying, I followed his example, but only made a pretence of tasting the horrid stuff. Very salt indeed," was my verdict; a safe one, I thought, in the circumstances.

66

"It's not salt at all," the man replied angrily. "The salt water is at the other side; this is a sweet liquid which comes from the same mine."

Feeling rather small, I followed him

to another cistern at the other side, and was forced this time to make a real trial of its contents, which were decidedly briny. "I will take your word for it," Ada said, when I tried to persuade her to prove for herself that there was now no doubt about our really being in the salt-mine.

For half an hour more we trudged on, our feet wringing wet, our backs aching, our throats filled with sulphur; but everything has an end, and at last, as we were on the very verge of collapsing in tears, the tunnel suddenly merged into a tremendous sort of cavern. Anything less like a fairy grotto could scarcely be imagined; but at any rate we could stand upright on firm ground, and that was always something to be thankful for. The guide meanwhile ran round, throwing the light of his torch on various ghastly-looking appliances, which stood in different parts of the cave, silent and motionless.

"It reminds me of the torturing chambers of the Spanish Inquisitors," Ada said; but the smile froze on her lips as our guide unexpectedly set in motion a tremendous machine just behind her, which groaned and rumbled and threw out its long black arms in every direction.

"You wanted to see the working of the mine, didn't you?" the man asked, with one of his fiendish grins; and off he went, pulling out a screw here, turning a handle there, till the whole place seemed one moving mass of machinery. I darted about like a mad creature, trying to get as far away from the roaring monsters as possible, and unable to ask a single question about the use of all these huge levers and enormous wheels. To me they seemed almost human, and I never thought of connecting them with the pretty little salt-cellar which is handed round so thoughtlessly at table.

"I'm sure the man is a lunatic, Ada said. "Just look what a diabolical delight he takes in playing with those things. I hope to goodness he understands them, and won't be caught up and killed before our eyes."

There were contingencies that I feared more than that; but I held my peace, and waited patiently till the man, returning, asked us how we liked the machinery.

"It is very nice, but would you mind stopping it?" I cried at the top of my voice.

With a shrug at the inconsistency of the sex, he did as he was told, silencing each of the noisy monsters with a sorrowful look as though they had been dear friends whose voices he loved to hear.

"Now we can go back," I said to Ada, and suiting the action to the word, was turning towards the tunnel, when a grimy hand was laid upon my shoulder.

"We have not finished yet," the guide said. "You must come down here; and unfastening a sort of trapdoor, he disappeared from view down a rough ladder which led-goodness knows where ! and Ada came tumbling down almost on the top of me; as she said, a minute alone with the black monsters above would finish her. We landed in another cave exactly similar to the one we had left, but without the machinery; why we had been brought there I could not understand, for there was nothing very interesting to see.

Afraid to refuse, I followed,

"Wait here," the man said, pointing to a stone upon which we meekly sat down, and watched him clamber up the rocks, looking round for something that was evidently hidden up there. At last he found it,—a heavy stone hammer! Hugging it close to him, and with the torch in his other hand, he carefully picked his way

down, and went off with it to the other end of the cave, where we heard him hammering away at some hard substance.

"Keeps coffins in here perhaps," Ada said, with a shudder; then getting up quickly, she whispered: Suppose we bolt while he is away; we could get a good start now." But I had not a bolt left in me; my feelings seemed quite numbed, and I could only wonder vaguely whether it would be nicer to be murdered outright, or to be left here to die a lingering death from starvation.

By this time the knocking had ceased, and I felt rather ashamed of my misgivings, when the suspected murderer returned laden with lovely pieces of pure white crystal, with which he told us to fill our pockets. "Lick one of them," he said; and glad to be let off so easily, I nearly choked myself in a desperate attempt to appear amiable.

There was another trap-door leading into a yet lower cavern. "Will you come down?" he said, pointing to it. "No, thank you; I think we would like to go back now." I should also have liked to see the stone hammer replaced in its rocky bed, but I did not dare to say so.

"Very well, miss; then we must go up again."

We needed no second bidding. Up the ladder we scrambled, and upon looking at my watch I found we had been in the mine exactly an hour and a half.

"There are two modes of exit," our guide told us. "You can either go back the way we came, or you can come up the steps, which will let you out at the top entrance, about a mile farther up than the one we came in at."

"How long does it take to get out by the higher way?" I asked.

"About twenty minutes; there are eight hundred steps."

"A sort of treadmill," said Ada. "But I vote we go; anything would be better than that dreadful passage." I was not sure that there would be much to choose between them; for the staircase, hewn out of the rock, did not look inviting. However, we should save twenty minutes by going that way, so we might as well try it.

"You had better pin your dresses up," the man said; "the steps are apt to be wet."

Wet was no word for it! There was a dirty pool of black mud on each of them; the passage was so narrow that the walls touched us on either side, and the ceiling seemed to weigh upon our heads. Still during the first ten minutes or so we got on pretty well; for my part, I was so glad to get out of the mine, that I did not care how we did it. All I thought of was that each step was taking us nearer to the daylight, and I did not mind how steep or how muddy they were; but when we were about half way up, a dreadful feeling of suffocation came over me. Suddenly I felt as though I could not draw another breath; everything seemed to press upon me,—the walls, the ceiling, all were so close and damp. Looking down, one saw nothing but a yawning abyss, and above, the ghastly guide mounting up and up, his flaming torch in dreadful proximity to my sister's curly hair. Suppose one of us should take fire in this horrible place! This thought, flashing through my mind already unhinged by all we had gone through, quite finished me. My knees began to tremble; a black star-studded mist came before my eyes; and I had just time to hand my torch to Ada, when I sank down half unconscious upon the stone steps. There was no room for Ada to pass, and she was terrified lest I should faint outright, and slip down into the dark vault below. "Try to keep hold of the handrail," she im

plored, holding me up as best she could. I made a desperate attempt to fight against the drowsiness that was fast stealing over me. "If only I could get a breath of air I should be all right," I gasped. The man told Ada that if I could manage to climb a few dozen more steps, we should come to a ventilator in the roof. How I managed it I cannot tell, but somehow or other I did; and oh, the luxury of the sweet fresh breeze that came down to meet us as we neared that blessed ventilator.

"You had better sit here, and take in a good supply of air for the rest of the journey," Ada said, planting me right under the grating. She, poor girl, looked very pale and frightened by this time, and I thought we had better push on while we were both of us fairly able to do so. After what seemed like an eternity, but must in reality have been about five minutes, we came to the end of the steps, and found ourselves in a passage similar to the one by which we had entered, only broader, so that we were able to help each other along.

We were destined to one more fright before getting fairly quit of the mine, and that was when, about half way down the passage, we heard approaching steps, and saw the flicker of a light in the distance. In another moment a second man appeared, scarcely less villainous looking than our guide to our heated imaginations. "What a time you have been!" he grumbled, as he took the latter aside, and they stood whispering together, with occasional glances in our direction.

"Of course, this is an accomplice," Ada said. "I see now why the man was so anxious for us to come the high

way! He had appointed to meet his friend here, and debate what should be done with us."

66

toutes

I tried to catch something of their conversation. 'Anglaises . . . seules... courageuses- was all I could gather. Anything less courageous than we looked, two poor trembling creatures huddled together against the wall, could hardly be imagined! I almost screamed when the consultation being at an end, the second villain advanced towards us, but, with a look of curiosity and a bow, he passed on, and we were allowed to resume our walk. Five minutes more, and we were out on the mountain-path again in the blessed sunlight.

"I could hug that sweet man," Ada said, looking towards the guide, "for not having killed us. I know I have suffered at least a dozen different sorts of deaths in the last two hours at his hands."

Ada looked scarcely more huggable than the guide; her face as black as a sweep's, her smock filthy, and her boots a sight to dream of. However, five minutes at the pump in the miner's house made us look more presentable; and when his wife appeared with a blacking-brush, we felt that we should once more be able to face our poor old chaperon. To this day she tells people that a salt-mine is a most delightful place to visit. Two young friends of hers went all over one last winter, and although they said very little about it, she could tell from the lovely crystals they brought back with them what a charming place it must have been; in fact, she had regretted ever since that she had not gone with them.

We listen and smile; but we say nothing.

WE stood on the balcony of a villa on the brow of the hill which, at the west end of Naples, forms a tolerably acute angle with the long promontory of Posilipo, enclosing all the curve of Mergellina and its port, and the church, square, and grotto of Piedigrotta, where, each year, takes place the great festival.

As we stood there, at three o'clock in the morning of the 8th of September, with the moon riding high in a sky half veiled with a slight haze, and a perfect calm in the atmosphere, there came up from far below, where an illuminated space showed among the houses on the sea-shore, a noise, colossal, imposing, more multitudinous than the roar of angry waves on a rocky coast. And this noise arose almost entirely from human throats, for what was not the human voice tself was the innumerable blowing of breath through trumpets and whistles of all descriptions and sizes, in all varieties of unmelodious notes, mixed rarely with the blast of windinstruments belonging to bands of music, the drums of which hardly counted. We heard in fact the "voice of the people" wafted up, from sunset to dawn, and raised, not in acclamation of some public event, not in protest against some crying wrong, but purely for its own inane but goodhumoured pleasure; a pleasure derived from being, this people, for at least one whole night, masters of the city. The immense tumult, a veritable pandemonium, gave one a strange sense of what a power the people is; of how irresistible would be its might, if ever with one voice it determined, for good or evil, to accomplish some mighty deed.

Some four hundred years ago this celebrated festival of Piedigrotta was already an old-established custom at Naples. A century and a half ago it became a state holiday, and was celebrated by king and people with the utmost civil and military pomp. Now it is no longer accompanied by royal processions and a grand display of military. The people is king; and for twenty-four hours the inhabitants of Naples and the neighbourhood pour through all the streets and through the public gardens on their way to the church of Piedigrotta, which, with the street leading to it, is splendidly illuminated for the occasion. In fantastic cortèges, in family groups, in bands of ragged boys or singly, the populace explode bombs, whistle, drink, feast, dance, and above all sing the songs of Piedigrotta.

Formerly these songs arose among the people themselves, some inspired by medieval legends, but most pure love-songs, gay or sad, to which some untutored musician set a tune, or which were transformed into masterpieces by such geniuses as Bellini and Rossini, and became the delight not only of Naples, but of the civilised world. Now many of the songs arise in other ways. Many are still the original work of the unskilled people, but others aim higher, and really gifted poets and musicians write and compose for Piedigrotta. And when these superior creations chance to touch the heart and ear of the people, they are at once adopted, and are sung all over the city by rich and poor alike.

Formerly the original songs were sung by the populace on the eve of Piedigrotta by the people to the blowing of a reed-pipe, or common