may be seen by the hewer. As soon as they have found the mine
safe, the hewers come down and begin their work; and when they have had
time to fill a corve or so, they are followed by the putters and other
labourers. Sometimes it is necessary to work all the twenty-four hours,
and then the people are divided into three gangs, who each work eight
hours; but the poor little trappers are divided only into two parties,
who have each to be down in the mine twelve hours together, sitting all
alone by the side of their traps, like poor little Dick, in the dark.

STORY SIX, CHAPTER 2.

Little Dick's father, Samuel Kempson, was a hewer. He had not been
brought up to the mining work, like most of the men; but once, when
there had been a strike among the colliers, he and others from a distant
county, being out of work, had got employed, and tempted by the high
wages, had continued at it. While little Dick was sleeping at his trap,
and getting a cuff on the head from Bill Hagger, Samuel Kempson was
sitting, pick in hand, and hewing in a chamber at the end of a main
passage nearly two miles off. The Davy lamp was hung up before him, and
the big corve was by his side. There he sat or kneeled, working with
his pick, or filling the corve with his spade. Often he thought of the
green fields and hedges and woods of his native county. Though his
wages had been poor, and his work hedging or ditching, or driving carts,
or tending cattle; and though he had been sometimes wet to the skin, and
cold enough in winter, yet in summer he had had the blue sky and the
warm sun above him, and he had breathed the pure air of heaven, and
smelt the sweet flowers and the fresh mown grass, and he sighed for
those things which he was never likely to enjoy again.

There he was, a hewer of coal, and a hewer of coal he must remain, or
run the chance of starving; for he had a large family, and though he had
had good wages, three shillings and sometimes four shillings a day, and
no rent to pay, and coals for a trifle, he had saved nothing. He had
now got into such a way of spending money that he thought he couldn't
save. His wife, Susan, thought so too. She was not a bad wife, and she
kept the house clean and tidy enough, but she was not thrifty. Both he
and she were as sober and industrious as most people, but they had meat
most days, and plenty of white bread, and butter and cheese, and good
clothes, and other things, which cost money, so that