The fiddler stopped, descended the ladder, and approached the wicked-looking gipsy, who lay panting for breath.
"Rogue," said he, "confess where you got that purse of ducats, or I will play again!"
"I stole it, I stole it!" he cried, pitifully.
The judge, hearing this, condemned him, as a thief and false accuser, to be hanged, instead of the boy, who journeyed on to see the world.
VISIT TO A COLLIERY.
Abercarn Colliery is about ten miles from Newport, England. A very polite invitation had been sent from the proprietors or manager of this colliery to Dr. Pennington and myself to visit their pits, and instructions had been given to the agent at Newport to provide us a conveyance, and to offer us every attention. Accordingly, on Friday morning, a handsome carriage and pair were at our door, and a very gentlemanly young man presented himself as our guide. It was a lovely day, and the ride up to the mountains a most delightful one; the scenery becoming more and more wild and picturesque as we approached the coal district; and our guide gave us much curious information connected with our local Welsh legends and superstitions. We were also accompanied by a very intelligent young man, a draper at Newport, who was quite at home with the Welsh language, and gave us many particulars connected with the etymology of the names of places that we passed. Thus we sped along most agreeably until we reached the region of tall chimneys, ponderous engines, and all the apparatus for disemboweling the mountains. Dismissing our carriage at the entrance to the works, we proceeded to the counting-house, where we were most courteously received by the head clerk, who first unrolled a large map, and explained to us the geography of the diggings, the mode in which the shafts and levels were cut, and the coal worked; we then proceeded to the robing-room, and under the care of one or two grimy valets de chambre, we were soon rigged out in toggery that would render us the observed of all observers at a masquerade. Fancy the learned doctor in a coarse white flannel coat that was a sort of compromise between an Oxonian and a dustman, but with sleeves reaching only to the elbow; his trowsers turned half-way up his boots, and a coarse black felt sou-wester stuck on his head.
My costume was ditto. With a stout stick in our hand, we were conveyed to the pit's mouth, and handed over to the custody of "Thomas"—a great man, in every sense of the word. He was the overseer of the under-ground workings, and was one of the finest men I ever saw. The shaft down which we were to descend was a perpendicular well, I won't say how many hundred yards deep, up and down which traveled two platforms side by side, about the size of an ordinary breakfast table; one bringing up a full wagon of coal, while the other took down an empty wagon. The platform comes up, the full wagon is wheeled away; but instead of the empty one, Thomas takes his stand in the centre, and desires us four to stand round him, and hold on by his jacket, but not to grasp any part of the platform. We obey, with an unpleasantly vivid remembrance of the description given of the last moments of Rush and the Mannings. Thomas becomes a sort of momentary Calcraft; and when he roars out, "Go!" and we feel the platform give way beneath our feet, we cling desperately to him with a savage satisfaction that he is with us, and must share our fate. We are rattled, rumbled, jolted down a gigantic telescope, with just light enough from above to make us painfully aware that there is exactly sufficient room between the edge of our platform and the sides of the shaft for us to fall through. We are conscious of clammy drops falling and clinging to us—they may be cold sweat, or perhaps dirty water from the sides of the pit—it occurs to us that five lives are at the mercy, or rather tenacity, of a rusty link, and I enter into unpleasant calculations of the time it might take to fall, say 350 feet. There is a sensation that may be vertigo, perhaps faintness—possibly an inclination to suicide, when a sudden jolt brings us to the ground, and, but for our hold on Thomas, would certainly capsize our perpendicular. We are at the bottom of the shaft, and quit the platform, very glad that the meeting is dissolved. We find ourselves in a small, dark vault, just visible by the glimmer of a single candle stuck in the wall. Thomas lights five candles, and we each take one. We then perceive that there is an iron tramway winding from under the shaft toward a couple of low doors. We are placed in single file in the centre of this tramway, and Thomas suggests a game of follow the leader. The gate-keeper (a most important person, upon whom depends very much the proper ventilation of the mine) opens the doors, and we enter a level—the doors being immediately closed behind us. We find it necessary at once to stoop, and we tramp forward through the dirtiest of all Petticoat-lanes—a thick, black mud coming half-way over our insteps, and our candles being now and then reflected in a running gutter that might be thought to discharge itself from a waste pipe from Day and Martin's. There is an incessant rumbling over our heads, as though a procession of railway trains were out for the day. Large lumps of coal, dropped from the wagons, and cross-beams connecting the tram-rails, render the footing very precarious, and produce a very oscillating wave-like line of march. I am following the sable dustman; he suddenly flounders, flourishes his stick and his candle desperately for a moment; I see the white coat dash forward; I hear a shout and a hiss; the doctor's candle is in the gutter, and he is groping his way up to his feet again. We are more cautious, and find it necessary to stoop still lower; the stratification of the rock is pointed out to us, and we are told that this is a layer of coal, that of iron-stone, which, we believe from our boundless faith in Thomas's word, not that we see any thing to remind us of the contents of our scuttle at home, or of the handle of our pump. We go on so many hundred yards, but we do not count, when we come to a side cutting, and are conscious of a ghostly apparition at the entrance. It moves on; we might mistake it for a block of coal set up endways. It is a miner, who speaks, and his language seems exactly to harmonize with the place. The deep, guttural Welsh, from its utter incomprehensibility to us, seems, like the man, a part of the mine; and our reverence for Thomas rises when we find that this gibberish is as intelligible to him as all the other dark mysteries of the pit. This is a cutting where they are mining out the coal. At a short distance huge blocks are lying scattered over the path; the place is about four feet high and six feet broad. We are invited to enter and see the process of mining out a block. We seat ourselves on lumps of coal, and at the end of the hole we see a miner crouched upon the ground, hacking out a space about eighteen inches deep, into the coal at the bottom, forming a sort of recess wide enough to slip in a six inch drawer the whole width of the place; the labor of doing this is inconceivably great in the miner's cramped position; he pants loudly at every stroke of the pick, and breathes an atmosphere of thick coal dust. When he has scooped out the bottom place, he cuts, with a very sharp pick, a slice down each side, leaving the mass supported only by its hold above; a wedge is now driven in close to the ceiling, and with about a dozen heavy blows, down tumbles the whole mass, the miner and the little candle boy who lights him keeping a sharp look out to dart back just as the mass falls. Thus are we supplied with coal; and it is impossible to see these poor fellows toiling in those dark, stifling holes, crouching in positions that threaten dislocation to every joint, and with deep, rapid inspirations drawing in dust that must convert their lungs into so many coal-beds, without feeling how much of our comfort we owe to a race of men, the real character of whose labor is so little understood and appreciated. They are paid so much per ton, and generally remain under-ground about ten hours at a stretch; but sometimes, when they wish to fetch up lost time after a holiday or a drinking bout, they will work for fourteen hours without stopping. Their wages range from twenty to thirty shillings a week. They have been much addicted to drink, but the Temperance movement has produced a beneficial change in this respect in some districts. We remained under-ground nearly an hour; now and then a rumbling noise warned us of the approach of a wagon, and, stepping aside, a spectral-looking horse flitted by, tugging its hubbly load, visible a moment in the dim light, and vanishing again instantly into utter darkness. Having completed our inspection, and returned to the entrance of the shaft, we again endured the process of suspended animation, and emerged into daylight with a higher estimate than ever of the blessed sunlight and the green fields. We were taken into a shed at the pit's mouth, where Thomas curried us down with a birch broom and a wisp of straw, after which we doffed our togs, had a good wash, and once more resumed our civilized appearance, highly gratified and instructed by our introduction to the shades below.