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Hall colliery, which lay two or three miles from Walsall, there had been
an inrush of water from some old deserted workings near at hand, and
twenty-two miners were imprisoned. The water filled the shaft to a depth
of sixty feet, and so the rescuers were really hopeless of being able to
pump the mine clear before the prisoners had been reduced to a state of
absolute starvation. There was always the certainty that the inrush of
water would be followed by an influx of poisonous gases. This, in fact,
proved to be the case, and every man had been dead a week before the
first body was recovered.

I began my friendship with Archibald Forbes at Pelsall, and I began
it in a rather curious fashion. The place was a wretched little mining
village with a solitary beer shop in it, and there was only one house in
which it was possible to secure decent accommodation. I bargained with
its tenant for a bed, and agreed to pay him half-a-crown a night for the
accommodation. Forbes had made a precisely similar arrangement with the
woman of the house, and there was but a single bedroom to be disposed
of. Neither of us knew anything of the other's bargain until the
following morning. Forbes was under the belief that an attempt at
descent was intended to be made that night, and that it was to break
into an old abandoned air-way which had long been bricked up at the side
of the shaft, and was believed to lead to the stables of the mine which
were situated at a point above the level of the flood.

The dialect of the Black Country, when spoken at its broadest, is not
easy for a stranger to understand. I, as a native of the district,
was of course familiar with it, but Forbes was out of his element
altogether, and might almost have tried talking chockjaw. I, knowing
perfectly well that the intended attempt could not be made for at
least twenty-four hours, went away with a comfortable mind and slept
in Bailey's cottage. When I left the door next morning I saw striding
towards me through the mud a very begrimed and unprepossessing-looking
figure. It was, after all, a man with a two days' beard, a very dirty
face, a collarless, grimy shirt, who wore heavy ankle Jack-boots,
and had his trousers rolled above his ankles. This person accosted me
brusquely. "What are you doing in that cottage there?" he asked me, and
I asked in turn, "what business of his that might be." He told me he
had hired and paid for the only available bed in the house from
th