arm he couldn't get twopence. Without telling her what he was about to
do, the first morning he returned to work he took Mark by the arm and
led him along to the pit's mouth. He had brought a flannel suit. He
made the boy put it on. "Now, Mark, we are going into the pit, and
you'll do what I tell you when we get down," he said, as if it was a
matter of course. "I've arranged with the manager to take you on from
to-day as a trapper. Though you may not like it at first, you'll soon
get accustomed to the work, and so let's have no nonsense. Here's the
corve all ready to go down--come along."

CHAPTER TWO.

LEARNING TO WATCH.

Simon, taking Mark by the hand, stepped on to an iron frame-work or
cage, suspended over the pit's mouth. "Take hold of this bar and don't
move as you value your life, boy," he said.

Mark obeyed. Several other men and two boys stepped on to the cage, it
began to descend. Though little Mark had been hearing of mines all his
life, and felt no especial unwillingness, yet all seemed strange about
him. It appeared to him by the dim light of the lamps which his uncle
and the other men held in their hands, that the shafts were rushing
upwards at a fearful rate, while the light of day, which he could still
see above him, grew gradually less and less. A giddiness overtook him.
He might have fallen, had not his uncle still held him by the shoulder.
How long he had been descending he could not tell, when he found the
cage come to a stand-still, and that he was down beneath the surface of
the earth, a thousand feet or more.

The rumbling of the trains of laden waggons coming to the shafts, the
faint voices of the men in the distance, were the only sounds heard,
while the lights which flitted here and there only served to make the
long vaulted galleries appear more gloomy and dark.

"Come along, Mark!" said his uncle, shouldering his pick and spade, and
holding his lantern before him.

As they stepped out of the cage, they found themselves in a gloomy
vault, on one side of which a huge furnace was unceasingly roaring,
while at the other were the stables in which a number of horses, mules,
and donkeys were kept. Before them was the main gallery, about eight
feet high and the same wide, arched over with bricks four thick, and
extending three miles away from the mouth of the pit. Out of it for its
whole length opened shorter galleries or side galleries where the coals
were now being won. I