the mine, pumping out the water, loading the waggons, ventilating the
shafts and galleries, and for performing duties innumerable of various
descriptions. As the evening drew on, the women retired into their
cottages to prepare supper for their husbands and sons, whose return
home they were now expecting. Already the corves which took them down
to their work in the early morning must be on their way up to the
surface, and it is time to have the savoury messes ready for dishing up.
Abundance is on the board, for the miner's wages are sufficient to
supply him with what would be luxuries to an ordinary labourer above
ground; but were they far higher, could they repay him for a life of
constant danger, of hard incessant toil, and the deprivation for more
than half the year of a sight of the blue sky, the warming rays of the
sun, and the pure air of heaven, except on the one blessed day of the
week when he enjoys them with the rest of God's creatures? For months
together he descends the shaft in the gloom of morning and does not
return till darkness has again shrouded the earth.

Many of the good wives had looked at their clocks to judge when to take
off the bubbling saucepans from the blazing fires, when, to their
dismay, they felt the earth tremble beneath their feet, while a dull
rumbling sound like the discharge of musketry struck their ears, coming
from the direction of the works. Pale with terror, they rushed
out-of-doors to see a vast black mass of dust and smoke rising into the
air and forming an inverted cone, beneath which, for an instant, could
be distinguished shattered beams and planks, corves and pieces of
machinery, which quickly fell again to the earth. The next instant a
darkness, like that of early twilight, pervaded the atmosphere, and fine
ashes, such as are ejected from a volcano, fell in a thick shower to the
ground, which it covered to such a depth that the feet of the
terror-stricken women left their imprints on it as they ran towards the
scene of the catastrophe--some shrieking and lamenting, but, in most
cases, the intensity of their alarm preventing them from giving
utterance to their feelings. Among them a young woman, superior to the
rest in appearance, went hurrying on towards the pit's mouth, her hand
held by a little boy, who had evidently grasped it, refusing to be left
behind, when startled by the explosion, she had quitted her cottage.
Her fair hair, escaping from beneath her cap, st