three men together in our work at _Llwyn Llwyd_ were ear-witnesses of
_Knockers_ pumping, driving a wheelbarrow, etc.; but there is no pump in
the work, nor any mine within less than a mile of it, in which there are
pumps constantly going. If they were these pumps that they had heard,
why were they never heard but that once in the space of a year? And why
are they not now heard? But the pumps make so little noise that they
cannot be heard in the other end of _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine when they are at
work.

"We have a dumb and deaf tailor in this neighbourhood who has a
particular language of his own by signs, and by practice I can understand
him, and make him understand me pretty well, and I am sure I could make
him learn to write, and be understood by letters very soon, for he can
distinguish men already by the letters of their names. Now letters are
marks to convey ideas, just after the same manner as the motion of
fingers, hands, eyes, etc. If this man had really seen ore in the bottom
of a sink of water in a mine, and wanted to tell me how to come at it, he
would take two sticks like a pump, and would make the motions of a pumper
at the very sink where he knew the ore was, and would make the motions of
driving a wheelbarrow. And what I should infer from thence would be that
I ought to take out the water and sink or drive in the place, and wheel
the stuff out. By parity of reasoning, the language of _Knockers_, by
imitating the sound of pumping, wheeling, etc., signifies that we should
take out the water and drive there. This is the opinion of all old
miners, who pretend to understand the language of the _Knockers_. Our
agent and manager, upon the strength of this notice, goes on and expects
great things. You, and everybody that is not convinced of the being of
_Knockers_, will laugh at these things, for they sound like dreams; so
does every dark science. Can you make any illiterate man believe that it
is possible to know the distance of two places by looking at them? Human
knowledge is but of small extent, its bounds are within our view, we see
nothing beyond these; the great universal creation contains powers, etc.,
that we cannot so much as guess at. May there not exist beings, and vast
powers infinitely smaller than the particles of air, to whom air is as
hard a body as the diamond is to us? Why not? There is neither great
nor small, but by comparison. Our _Knockers_ are some of these powers,
the gua