Daniel lifted his voice, and it thundered and clanged about him, like a sudden explosion. A dozen echoes wakened, and he guessed that no such volume of sound had rolled through these iron-vaulted chambers since the machinery ceased.
"Be you here, Mr. Friend?" he shouted, and all the stagnant air rang.
No answering voice reached him; but the stertorous breathing ceased, and presently came the fall of slow feet. A head rose out of the earth; then it emerged, and a body and legs followed.
"Come down below, will 'e? I can't leave my work," said the apparition; then it sank again, and Brendon followed it down a flight of wooden steps. One cracked under his weight.
"Mind what you'm doing," called back the leader. "They'm rotten as touchwood in places."
Below was a forge, which Daniel had heard panting, and beside it stood retorts and various rough chemical appliances. The operator returned to his bellows and a great ray of hot, red light flashed and waned, flashed and waned.
Like some ancient alchemist amid his alembics, the older man now appeared, and his countenance lent aid to the simile, for it was bearded and harsh and bright of eye. Gregory Friend might have been sixty, and looked almost aged under these conditions. His natural colour was fair, but a life in the atmosphere of the great fuel-beds had stained his visible parts to redness. His very beard, folk said, was dyed darker than nature. He stood there, a strange man of fanatic spirit; and his eyes showed it. They burnt with unconquerable hope; they indicated a being to whom some sort of faith must be the breath of life. It remained for Daniel to discover the articles of that faith; and they were not far to seek.
"I be come from Ruddyford," said the labourer. "Master wants four journeys o' peat, and I was to say that the carts will be up Tuesday."
Friend nodded.
"'Tis ready; and a thousand journeys for that matter. Look here. The Company have sent these samples from Wales. What do 'e think of 'em?"