BY THE KING OF THE HEARTH.

"Do thee go on, Phil," said a miner, one of sixteen who sat about a
tap-room fire, "Do thee go on, Phil Spruce; and, Mrs. Pittis, fetch us
in some beer."

"And pipes," added a boy.

Mr. Spruce contemplated his young friend with a grim smile. "Well," said
he, "it's a story profitable to be heard, and so--"

"Ay, so it be," said a lame man, who made himself a little more than
quits with Nature, by working with his sound leg on the floor
incessantly. "So it be," said Timothy Drum, "Phil's a philosopher."

"It always strucked me," said a dirty little man, "that Phil has had a
sort of nater in him ever since that night we lost old Tony Barker."

"What happened then?" inquired the squire's new gamekeeper.

"Did ever you see down the shaft of a pit?" asked Phil.

"No; and I'd rather not."

"A deep, deep well. Whatever they may do in other parts, we sing hymns,
when we are pulled up, and if so be any of our butties at such times
says a wicked word, he gets cursed finely when we be safe up at the top.
We gon up and down different ways. In some old pits they have ladders,
one under another, which reminds me--"

"Always the way with Phil."

Mr. Spruce gazed sternly in the direction of the whisperer, and drank
some beer. "Which reminds me that once--"

We must here announce the fact concerning Mr. Philip Spruce, that his
method of telling a story ("Which reminds me," always meant a story with
him) is very discursive. He may be said to resemble Jeremy Bentham, who,
according to Hazlitt's criticism, fills his sentence with a row of pegs,
and hangs a garment upon each of them. Let us omit some portion of his
tediousness, and allow him to go on with his tale.

"It was in the year one thousand, eight, four, four; by token it was the
same month, November, in which the block fell upon Tim Drum's leg, I was
invited to a Christmas dinner by old Jabez Wilson. You are aware,
gentlemen, that hereabouts there are a great number of deserted pits.
The entrances to these are mostly covered with a board or two. There
aren't many stiles in our pit-country, so we are drove to using these
for firewood. The old pit mouths being left uncovered, and sometimes
hidden in brushwood, it is a very common thing for sheep to tumble in,
and if gentlemen go shooting thereabouts, they may chance to return home
without a dog--your good health, Timothy. As I was saying, I love to
ponder upon causes and compare effects