“‘Clem.’
“‘Well, Clem, get on with your shovelling for mercy’s sake. I’ve had enough of talking to last me to the end of the week.’
“I took up my spade, and for the next hour there were no other sounds but the steady, mechanical pick, pick, pick, and scrape, scrape, scrape. Every now and then George sprang aside, there was a crash, and a huge block of coal fell on the rocky floor, mid a blinding shower of dust. A fraction of a second later, and George would have been under it—his head a jelly. Yet the narrowness of his escape did not seem to affect him; he treated it with the utmost indifference, and, wiping away the smuts from his eyes, took up his pick and resumed his hitting. I regarded him in silent wonder. When the dinner-hour arrived, I groped my way to one of the big galleries—the idea of eating alone with George did not appeal to me—and, an hour later, I set out on my way back.
“A terrible sense of isolation hung over that part of the mine whither I bent my steps. It was so far away from the other adits—so tremendously deep down—so alarmingly dark, so sepulchrally silent. Up above, in the fields, woods, valleys, even far away in the primitive parts of the world, one is never quite alone, for the voice of Nature makes itself heard in the birds and insects. One knows one is in the midst of life. But here!—here in the bowels of the earth, encased in the dead vegetation of a long-forgotten world, there is absolute, all paramount stillness—a thousand times stiller than the stillness of a closed sepulchre. As I pressed on, the crunching of my feet on the scattered fragments of coal awoke the echoes of the galleries, and I paused every now and then to listen in awe to the long reverberating echoes as they rolled round and round me. Once, I nearly slipped; another foot, and I would have plunged into a sable labyrinth, the cold draught from which wound itself round me and choked the air in my lungs.
“I drew back in horror, and clinging to the knobbly surface of the black wall by my side, pressed frantically forward. God, supposing I should ever lose my way down here—be left behind when all the men went home—what would become of me? The perspiration rose on my forehead at the bare idea of it. Presently, to my relief, the sound of picking fell on my ears, and an abrupt turn of the passage brought me within sight of George, who had already recommenced work. I hastened to his side, and, picking up my shovel, began to make a neat stack of the rapidly accumulating chunks.
“‘George,’ I said, after an emphatic silence, ‘why didn’t you tell me it was you who was working along with Dick?’
“‘So you’ve been asking questions, have you?’ George growled, without, however, showing the slightest inclination to leave off working. ‘Who told you?’
“‘Jim and Harry Peters.’
“‘Well, and what of it?’
“‘But why didn’t you say so, when I asked you?’