Tom paused a moment to move his leg again.
“Was there an iron mine in the ground, too?” asked Billy sitting down on the threshold of the door.
“Yes, there was,” answered Tom. “If I had stayed on top of the ground, perhaps I shouldn’t have been hurt. Might have been blown up in a gopher hole, though, the way my brother was.”
“O-oh!” said Billy.
“Never heard of a gopher hole, I suppose,” continued Tom, settling back in his chair, as though he intended to improve his opportunity to talk.
“That’s one way that they get iron out of a mountain. They make holes straight into a bank. Then they put in sacks of powder, and fire it with a fuse. That loosens the ore so that they can use a steam shovel. Sometimes the men go in too soon.”
“I wish,” said Billy with a little shiver, “that you would tell me about the mine.”
“That’ll be quite a contract,” said Thomas Murphy, clasping his hands across his chest, “but I was in one long enough to know.
“You’ll think there was a mine down in the ground when I tell you that I’ve been down a thousand feet in one myself.
“I went down that one in a cage; but in the mine where I worked I used to go down on ladders at the side of the shaft.”