f in a mine must
have occurred to every man alive, and sent him thither.

In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than
in collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except
at rises, winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their
depth does not exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have
anticipated the other dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take
and down-take, was a ladder, either of the mine, or of the fugitives,
and I was able to descend without difficulty, having dressed myself in a
house at the village in a check flannel shirt, a pair of two-buttoned
trousers with circles of leather at the knees, thick boots, and a
miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into which fitted a
straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, and
also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months,
I lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the
treasure of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs,
Pomeranian women in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the
Khirgiz, the Bonze, the Imaum, and almost every type of man.

* * * * *

One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at
Barnard, come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a
reluctance, to where I was born; for I said I would go and see my sister
Ada, and--the other old one. I leaned and loitered a long time on the
bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, which is heavy with waving wood,
and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees sweeping round the
mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, where I wished
to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a sweet
strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow--the shadow of
Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my
hand a bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went,
where there is no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes
danger; and here in my miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding
sleepily upon the scene of lush umbrageous old wood that marks the long
way the river takes, from Marwood Chase up above, and where the rapid
Balder bickers in, down to bowery Rokeby, touched now with autumn; the
thickness of trees lessening away toward the uplands, where there are
far etherealized stretches of fie