“Ay, mester,” raising troubled eyes to its grandeur—“iverything's new. I feel aw lost some-toimes, an' feared-loike.”
Langley lifted his hat from his brow to meet a little passing breeze, and as it swept softly by he smiled in the enjoyment of its coolness. “Afraid?” he said. “I don't understand that.”
“I dunnot see into it mysen', mester. Happen it's th' bigness, an' quiet, an' th' lonely look, an' happen it's summat wrong in mysen'. I've lived in th' cool an' smoke an/ crowd an' work so long as it troubles me in a manner to—to ha' to look so high.”
“Does it?” said Langley, a few faint lines showing themselves on his forehead. “That's a queer fancy. So high!” turning his glance upward to where the tallest pine swayed its dark plume against the clear blue. “Well, so it is. But you will get used to it in time,” shaking off a rather unpleasant sensation.
“Happen so, mester, in toime,” was the simple answer; and then silence fell upon them again.
They had not very far to go. The houses of the miners—rough shanties hurriedly erected to supply immediate needs—were most of them congregated together, or at most stood at short distances from each other, the larger ones signifying the presence o£ feminine members in a family and perhaps two or three juvenile pioneers—the smaller ones being occupied by younger miners, who lived in couples, or sometimes even alone.
Before one of the larger shanties Langley reined in his horse. “A Lancashire man lives here,” he said, “and I am going to leave you with him.”
In answer to his summons a woman came to the door—a young woman whose rather unresponsive face wakened somewhat when she saw who waited.
“Feyther,” she called out, “it's Mester Langley, an' he's getten a stranger wi' him.”
“Feyther,” approaching the door, showed himself a burly individual, with traces of coal-dust in all comers not to be reached by hurried and not too fastidious ablutions. Clouds of tobacco-smoke preceded and followed him, and much stale incense from the fragrant weed exhaled itself from his well-worn corduroys. “I ha' not nivver seed him afore,” he remarked after a gruff by no means-ill-natured greeting, signifying the stranger by a duck of the head in his direction.