"It always strucked me," said a dirty little man, "that Phil has had a sort of nater in him ever since that night we lost old Tony Barker."
"What happened then?" inquired the squire's new gamekeeper.
"Did ever you see down the shaft of a pit?" asked Phil.
"No; and I'd rather not."
"A deep, deep well. Whatever they may do in other parts, we sing hymns, when we are pulled up, and if so be any of our butties at such times says a wicked word, he gets cursed finely when we be safe up at the top. We gon up and down different ways. In some old pits they have ladders, one under another, which reminds me—"
"Always the way with Phil."
Mr. Spruce gazed sternly in the direction of the whisperer, and drank some beer. "Which reminds me that once—"
We must here announce the fact concerning Mr. Philip Spruce, that his method of telling a story ("Which reminds me," always meant a story with him) is very discursive. He may be said to resemble Jeremy Bentham, who, according to Hazlitt's criticism, fills his sentence with a row of pegs, and hangs a garment upon each of them. Let us omit some portion of his tediousness, and allow him to go on with his tale.
"It was in the year one thousand, eight, four, four; by token it was the same month, November, in which the block fell upon Tim Drum's leg, I was invited to a Christmas dinner by old Jabez Wilson. You are aware, gentlemen, that hereabouts there are a great number of deserted pits. The entrances to these are mostly covered with a board or two. There aren't many stiles in our pit-country, so we are drove to using these for firewood. The old pit mouths being left uncovered, and sometimes hidden in brushwood, it is a very common thing for sheep to tumble in, and if gentlemen go shooting thereabouts, they may chance to return home without a dog—your good health, Timothy. As I was saying, I love to ponder upon causes and compare effects. I pondered as I walked—"
"And the effect was, that you tumbled into a pit, Phil Spruce."