“Was it something like a coal mine?” asked Billy.
“I’ve heard miners say,” answered Tom, “that some iron is so hard that it has to be worked with a pick and a shovel; but the iron in our mine was so soft that we caved it down.
“If I had been working with a pick, perhaps I shouldn’t have been hurt.
“When you cave iron, you go down to the bottom of the shaft and work under the iron. You cut out a place, and put in some big timbers to hold up the roof. Then you cut some more, and keep on till you think the roof may fall.
“Then you board that place in, and knock out some pillars, or blow them out, and down comes the iron. Then you put it in a car and push it to a chute, and that loads it on an elevator to be brought up. Sometimes they use electric trams; we used to have to push the cars.”
“It must be very hard work,” said Billy.
“Work, William, usually is hard,” said Thomas Murphy. “Work, underground or above ground, is work, William.”
“But you haven’t told me, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, “how you hurt your knee.”
“The quickest way to tell you that, William, is to tell you that the cave, that time, caved too soon. I got caught on the edge of it.
“After I got out of the hospital, I tried to work above ground; but the noise of the steam shovels and the blasting wore me out. So, one day, I took an ore train, and went to the boat and came up the river.