"You're like a whole lot o' these young fellows, Clem, who believe nothin' that they don't see. You don't never stop to think that maybe it's your own blindness an' not your own cleverness that keeps you from seem'. Wait till I tell you what happened to me, one time, when I was a door-boy in Germany.
"Long afore I first went down into a coal mine, I knew about the knockers, and where they come from. Dad told me that all the coal-seams o' the world were forests, once. Long afore Noah an' the Flood. He'd seen ferns an' leaves o' trees turned into coal. One time, when digging out a seam, he'd come across the trunk of a tree standin' upright in the coal, with the roots still in the under clay."
"That's right enough," agreed Clem, "but the coal-forests were a good many million years older than Noah!"
"Maybe, maybe; but you warn't there to see," Otto retorted. "Anyhow, there were forests, an' these forests were standin' afore the Flood. Judgin' by what's left, the trees o' these forests must ha' been big.
"All those trees, Dad used to say, had spirits o' their own, just like trees have to-day. Elves an' dryads, he used to call 'em. When the Flood came an' spread deep water over the whole world, the tops o' the hills were washed into the valleys an' all these forests were covered in mud an' sand. That's how it is you never find anything but shale or slate (which is mud-rock) or sandstone above a coal seam. What's more, when pullin' down slate, you'll often find sea-shells, like mussels an' clams. Ain't that so?"
"I won't argue with you about the Flood, Otto, for that's a long story. But you're dead right in saying that all coal seams are overlaid with rocks which have been laid down by water, and that fossil shells are found in the overlying layers. But go ahead and tell us what you saw."
"When the Flood came," the old man resumed, "the elves an' dryads what used to live in the coal-trees were swallowed up in the water. They weren't drowned, because spirits can't die—at least, that was what Dad told me. They couldn't go away from their trees, because the trees were still standin' there, though all covered in mud or sand. So they had to change their ways for a new life, first under the water, an' when the waters o' the Flood dried up, under the ground. The elves, who were the men-spirits o' the forest, became knockers; the dryads, who were the women-spirits o' the trees, became the sprites o' the gas damps.
"In the old days, folks used to be able to see these spirits o' the forests. They used to build temples to 'em, an' have regular festivals in the woods, always leavin' some food for 'em to eat. Dad told me never to forget that the only way to keep on the good side o' the spirits below ground was to keep out o' the mine on the first day o' spring an' the last day o' summer, an' every time I took anything to eat below ground, to leave a bite behind.
"I've always done it. In all the years I've been minin', I've never gone down the shaft on March 21st or September 20th, an' I never will. An', every time I've taken my dinner-pail to the face where I was workin', I've put a bit o' bread aside for the knockers. You can believe it or not, as you like, but when I got back to the place, on my next shift, the bread was gone."
"Probably rats," commented Clem, in an aside to Anton.