station. A little girl standing by a cow was
the only human being to be seen. The girl was barefoot; her white hair
looked as if it had not been touched by any comb for a week.

Grandly the hills stretched out, summit after summit. Here and there
could be seen a little home, plain enough and poor enough, but made
beautiful by its emerald setting.

"Do you work in the mills?" I asked the child with the white head. She
stuck her forefinger in her mouth, looked shyly down, and shook her
head.

Aunt Sally.

"Is that your cow?" was the next question. She nodded this time, and
looked up at us with pleasant blue eyes.

"Can you show as where the mine is?"

"Yes, I can," she said, brightening at the small bit of money I held
out, "It's yenter,--coom an' I'll tell ye."

We followed her to a fissure in the side of the hill, a place of rough
beams, and bare of verdure. It seemed singularly deserted, for it wanted
nearly half an hour to working time. We looked into the shaft with a
shudder. It led in a slanting direction into the deep earth, and it
seemed like going into a grave to enter it.

"Poppy goes down ther," said the girl. "He an' the other men are mad
'cause they have to stay there so long."

"Could we got a breakfast round hers, anywhere?" my friend asked of the
child.

"Oh, yes, Aunt Sally, down there;" stud she pointed to a little
clearing, dazzlingly white amidst the pretty garden spots. The girl
volunteered to go with us.

The child led us into a small clean room, where were milk-pans, shining
like silver.

Aunt Sally was a small, tidy body, with a bright English face of the
best type, straight as an arrow, and with an eye that meant business.

"Them miners is a hard set," she said, as she bustled about us, getting
bread and coffee. "You see, there's so many nations mixed. There's
Irish, and German, and Swiss, and patience knows what else, and they get
among themselves if they think things don't go right, and talk and talk,
and git discontented and ugly.

"I'll 'low it's a hard life, 'specially for the women and children,
though there aint but few o' _them_ work about here. But then, though
they work a good while, yet they have a good bit of daylight, after all.
The men as don't drink are, as a general rule, the easiest to git along
with. There go some of 'em now."

The Murdered Miner.

A group of low-browed, sturdy follows passed the door, laughing and
talking, seemingly contented, and after bre