pulled while the girls pushed behind.

Three journeys had to be made before the coal from Peter's mine was
added to the heap of Mother's coal in the cellar.

Afterwards Peter went out alone, and came back very black and
mysterious.

"I've been to my coal-mine," he said; "to-morrow evening we'll bring
home the black diamonds in the chariot."

It was a week later that Mrs. Viney remarked to Mother how well this
last lot of coal was holding out.

The children hugged themselves and each other in complicated wriggles of
silent laughter as they listened on the stairs. They had all forgotten
by now that there had ever been any doubt in Peter's mind as to whether
coal-mining was wrong.

But there came a dreadful night when the Station Master put on a pair
of old sand shoes that he had worn at the seaside in his summer holiday,
and crept out very quietly to the yard where the Sodom and Gomorrah heap
of coal was, with the whitewashed line round it. He crept out there, and
he waited like a cat by a mousehole. On the top of the heap something
small and dark was scrabbling and rattling furtively among the coal.

The Station Master concealed himself in the shadow of a brake-van that
had a little tin chimney and was labelled:--

G. N. and S. R.
34576
Return at once to
White Heather Sidings

and in this concealment he lurked till the small thing on the top of
the heap ceased to scrabble and rattle, came to the edge of the heap,
cautiously let itself down, and lifted something after it. Then the arm
of the Station Master was raised, the hand of the Station Master fell
on a collar, and there was Peter firmly held by the jacket, with an old
carpenter's bag full of coal in his trembling clutch.

"So I've caught you at last, have I, you young thief?" said the Station
Master.

"I'm not a thief," said Peter, as firmly as he could. "I'm a
coal-miner."

"Tell that to the Marines," said the Station Master.

"It would be just as true whoever I told it to," said Peter.

"You're right there," said the man, who held him. "Stow your jaw, you
young rip, and come along to the station."

"Oh, no," cried in the darkness an agonised voice that was not Peter's.

"Not the POLICE station!" said another voice from the darkness.

"Not yet," said the Station Master. "The Railway Station first. Why,
it's a regular gang. Any more of you?"

"Only us," said Bobbie and Phyllis, coming out of the shadow of another
truck l