onster, touched him very nearly. He fell asleep and dreamed of watching
Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly, ironic face
peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly real, that he
awoke. It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black branches barred the
sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams from the lamps danced,
fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-stems, into the cold heart
of the forest. For an hour or more Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and
hide from the stillness, and overmastering gloom of these great woods.
Then softly a whisper of noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the
whole slow radiance of the morning glory. But it brought no warmth; and
Scorrier wrapped himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age
had touched him.

Close on noon he reached the township. Glamour seemed still to hover
over it. He drove on to the mine. The winding-engine was turning, the
pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
unusual. 'Some mistake!' he thought. He drove to the mine buildings,
alighted, and climbed to the shaft head. Instead of the usual rumbling
of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over the screens, there
was silence. Close by, Pippin himself was standing, smirched with dirt.
The cage, coming swift and silent from below, shot open its doors with a
sharp rattle. Scorrier bent forward to look. There lay a dead man, with
a smile on his face.

"How many?" he whispered.

Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below," and
entered the man's name in a pocket-book.

An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy. The
sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the anguish
or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men. He asked an
old miner how long Pippin had been at work.

"Thirty hours. Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up at
last. He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;" the old
man gave a sigh. "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."

Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
faces. The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went on
and on. Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun. The old miner woke him,
saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!" The
very next to be brought up was th