r!" echoing along
the passages. He sat on and on; his thoughts went back to the ghosts
and spirits he had been told about, and to the tales he had heard of the
blowing up of gas, and the sad scenes he had indeed himself witnessed.
How dark and silent was all around! Had he dropped asleep? He heard a
deep and awful groan. "I am come to take you off, down, down, down,"
said a voice. Where it came from, Dick could not tell. He trembled
from head to foot, trying to see through the darkness in vain, for no
cat could have seen down there. Not a ray of the blessed sunlight ever
penetrated into those passages. "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming!"
said the voice.

"Oh, don't, don't, don't!" cried poor Dick, in a terrible fright.

He felt a big hand placed on his shoulder. "I've got you, young one,
come along with me," said the voice.

Dick shrieked out with fear. He trembled all over, and the next moment,
just as a loud, hoarse laugh sounded in his ear, he went off in a faint.

"Kenner, kenner, kenner!" was shouted down the pit's mouth, and echoed
along the galleries. Samuel Kempson heard it far away, and, crawling
out of the hole in which he had been hewing, threw his pick and spade
over his shoulder, and took his way homeward, not over pleasant green
fields as labourers in the country have to do, but along the dark, black
gallery, lighted by his solitary Davy lamp, which was well-nigh burnt
out. He did not forget his boy Dick. He called out to him, but got no
reply. Again and again he called. His heart sank within him, for he
loved the little fellow, though he made him work in a way which, to
others, might appear cruel. Could anything have happened to the child?
Once more he called, "Dick, Dick!" Still there was no answer. Perhaps
some of the other men had taken him home. He went on some way towards
the pit's mouth, then his mind misgave him, and he turned back. To a
stranger, all the traps would have looked alike, but he well knew the
one at which Dick was stationed. He pushed it open, and there, at a
little distance from it, he saw a small heap of clothes. He sprang
forward. It was Dick. Was his boy dead? He feared so. The child
neither moved nor breathed. He snatched him up, and ran on with him to
the foot of the shaft, where several men stood waiting to be drawn up.
The rough men turned to him with looks of pity in their faces.

"Anything fallen on the little chap?" asked one.

"Foul air,