We can speak of the roof and the floor of a coal-mine, because the coal lies in what are called seams, between layers of slate or hard clay. I cannot tell you much about the sedges and reeds and giant ferns, the remains of which have been found in these seams of coal, but I know that they are of the same kind as plants which are now found in damp and warm places, though they were giants indeed compared with them. Some of these old-world plants would not grow in our country now, but there are great mare's-tails, just the same as the small ones which I have often found beside a pool of black water on an Irish bog; and I have read that some plants with stems fifty feet long, which are found in coal, are of the same kind as a pretty little moss which grows upon the mountains almost all over England.
You remember the story about the boy who was brought up in a mine. Now I want to tell you about a little girl who did not live in a coal-mine, but was often taken there by her father. Her mother had died when she was a baby, and as she grew older her father was her constant friend, and loved his little daughter so much that he liked to have her always near him. And so, though she was only seven years old when he came to work in this mine, he very often took her with him in the cage, and she had leave to stay underground until his work was done and he could take her home again. Children can always find ways of amusing themselves, and this child had a happy time in her strange nursery, and many a merry game she played among the coal. As she grew older her father allowed her to carry a lantern, as the miners did, and she would go fearlessly through the dark passages by herself, until she knew all their windings as well as you know the paths in your father's garden.
But all at once this happy life came to an end: three years had passed, and she was just ten years old, when a great sorrow came to this child. As her dear father was going down the shaft one morning the chain broke, and the cage fell to the bottom of the mine. When his mates ran to the spot, they knew at once that he had been killed by that terrible fall, and slowly and sadly they took up his crushed and wounded body and carried it home. The first thing that the dear little daughter knew about the accident which had made her an orphan child, was when she saw the men, who had worked with her father, coming towards his cottage with their sad burden.
She at once ran to meet them, asking when father would be home; but the sight of their faces soon told her, young as she was, all the truth. When first she understood what had happened she cried with a bitter cry, for her father was all she had in the world. Then, while the rough miners, amid their tears, tried to comfort her, she suddenly knelt down on the grass where they had laid the body and prayed as her dear father had taught her to pray.
[Illustration: THE MINER'S LITTLE DAUGHTER.]
What a touching thing it must have been to see the child kneeling there, and to hear her, in her great grief, say three times over, "Thy will be done!"
One of the miners took her to his home, and they all tried to comfort her. At first it seemed as if she could not recover from the shock, and they feared she would die of grief; but by-and-by she began to try to help the kind woman—who was like a mother to her—in the care of her little children, and at last she got courage to go down into the mine again, to the very place where her poor father had been killed.
But she did not come now to run about and play hide-and-seek among the winding ways; those days were over, and the sorrowful time, which had passed since then, had taught her precious lessons. Her father's Friend was her Friend now, and she loved to carry the Bible, which had belonged to her father, down into the mine, and while the miners were taking their dinner or their short rest, she used to sit beside them and read them chapters and psalms, and so became a little messenger to tell them of the love of God. Do you know a hymn about shining in this world—where so "many kinds of darkness" are found—for the Lord Jesus Christ? I do not know whether this child had ever heard of it, but it is very sweet to see that the Lord had taught her to shine—as the hymn says—"first of all for Him"; then in her little corner in that humble cottage where she tried, in spite of her own sore trouble, to be a cheer and comfort to the miner's wife; and then He gave her a little corner in the dark mine where she might shine
"Like a little candle
Burning in the night."
The rough men loved this gentle child who had known sorrow so early. They listened as she read to them, and used to say she was their good angel. If we remember that an angel means a messenger, we shall perhaps think it not a wrong name to give to her, since she read to them God's Book, which is His message to us.