“Now if I were a superstitious fellow,” said Philip to himself, “and ready to believe in ghosts and goblins, I should run back and spread the news that this part of the pit is haunted by the restless spirit of some poor pitman who lost his life here years ago, and comes back to work. But I don’t believe in that sort of story, and I’m going to see what it means.”
All the same he felt very much startled; for it seemed so unaccountable for anyone to be there. The men would be in the regular seams. There was nothing to bring them here; and as they toiled at piece-work, they would not lift a pick except to hew out coal. No overman would be here without his knowledge; and try how he would to find some reason for the sound, he was still at fault. The only possibility was that, in some peculiar way the echo of a hewer’s pick ran along the silent galleries, to be reverberated from this distant wall.
“Impossible!” he said, doubling up his map and replacing it in his breast, as he rose and took up his lamp.
“It is impossible!” he said again, as tap, tap, tap, the regular stroke as of a pick was heard, and with no small feeling of trepidation he went to search out the cause of the unusual sound.
Chapter Eight.
Parks’s Mark.
Before he had gone far he became aware that the noise came from the old gallery that he had marked down as being the most likely to lead nearest to the workings of the ancient pit, and, after carefully peering down it, he held his lamp above his head to gaze in farther. But he could see nothing; and suddenly the noise ceased.
With a quick motion Philip thrust the tall, thin lamp inside his flannel mine-coat and buttoned it up, for the thought suddenly struck him that if anyone was at work there he would be sure to have a light.