“Tom! Tom! We’ll send you bad luck to-morrow, Tom! you greedy creature not to leave a single crumb for the Knockers!”
And they kept on squeaking, and tee-heeing in a mocking way; but getting farther and farther in the distance until they were quite gone.
Then Tom felt tired and drowsy, and lay down on the floor to sleep awhile.
When he waked, the place was very still. He rubbed his eyes, and saw a score of Knockers leaning on their tools, and standing in a circle around him. They were little, withered old men, with legs like drum-sticks, and arms longer and thinner than their legs. They kept nodding their great ugly heads, squinting their horrid eyes, wriggling their hooked noses, and grinning from ear to ear.
Tom lay there trembling and frightened almost to death. Then the oldest and ugliest of the Knockers came close to him, and stooping, made the most horrid grimaces in Tom’s face; while all the others lolled out their tongues, and rolled themselves into balls, and grinned at him from between their spindle-legs.
Then Tom saw that his candle was sputtering and just going out, and he sprang to his feet to light another. As he did so, all the little men vanished. They seemed to melt away one into the other like puffs of smoke.
Feeling very stiff and tired, Tom mounted the ladders, and left the mine. When he told the old tinners what he had seen, they were not surprised, for it was well known among them that the mine Tom had been working in was the abode of troops of Knockers. But the tinners, one and all, blamed Tom for speaking to the little men in an unfriendly way, and for not leaving them a bite of his breakfast.
From that time on, all Tom’s luck was gone. The mines closed down, and his money went, and he was hurt by a fall. And though he tried hard to find the Knockers again, so that he might feed them well, he never saw one, nor even heard the sounds of their picks and shovels in the mine.