Part 2 (1/2)
”Yes, Mr Starr,” replied Harry
”Really! has your family never left the old mine since the cessation of the works?”
”Not a day, Mr Starr You know my father It is there he was born, it is there he means to die!”
”I can understand that, Harry I can understand that! His native mine!
He did not like to abandon it! And are you happy there?”
”Yes, Mr Starr,” replied the young miner, ”for we love one another, and we have but feants”
”Well, Harry,” said the engineer, ”lead the way”
And walking rapidly through the streets of Callander, in a few minutes they had left the town behind them
CHAPTER III THE DOCHART PIT
HARRY FORD was a fine, strapping fellow of five and twenty His grave looks, his habitually passive expression, had fro his coular features, his deep blue eyes, his curly hair, rather chestnut than fair, the natural grace of his person, altogether made him a fine specimen of a lowlander
Accustomed fro and hardy, as well as brave and good Guided by his father, and iun his education, and at an age when ed tohis fellows, and few are very ignorant in a country which does all it can to re the first years of his youth, the pick was never out of Harry's hand, nevertheless the young e to raise him into the upper class of the miners, and he would certainly have succeeded his father as overman of the Dochart pit, if the colliery had not been abandoned
Jaood walker, yet he could not easily have kept up with his guide, if the latter had not slackened his pace The young , followed the left bank of the river for about acourse, they took a road under tall, dripping trees Wide fields lay on either side, around isolated far; in another sheep with silky wool, like those in a child's toy sheep fold
The Yarrow shaft was situated four , Jae in the country He had not seen it since the day when the last ton of Aberfoyle coal had been ericultural life had now taken the place of the , active, industrial life The contrast was all the greater because, during winter, field work is at a standstill But for population, above and below ground, filled the scene with aniht and day The rails, with their rotten sleepers, now disused, were then constantly ground by the weight of wagons Now stony roads took the place of the olda desert
The engineer gazed about him with a saddened eye He stopped now and then to take breath He listened The air was no longer filled with distant whistlings and the panting of engines None of those black vapors which thewith the clouds No tall cylindrical or pris fed fro out its white vapor The ground, forht look, to which Jaineer stood still, Harry Ford stopped also The youngin his cos; he, a child of the mine, whose whole life had been passed in its depths
”Yes, Harry, it is all changed,” said Starr ”But at the rate orked, of course the treasures of coal would have been exhausted soret it, Mr Starr,” answered Harry ”The as hard, but it was interesting, as are all struggles”
”No doubt, ers of landslips, fires, inundations, explosions of firedaainst all those perils! You say well! It was a struggle, and consequently an exciting life”
”The miners of Alva have been more favored than the miners of Aberfoyle, Mr Starr!”
”Ay, Harry, so they have,” replied the engineer
”Indeed,” cried the young lobe was not h to last millions of years!”
”No doubt there would, Harry; it ed, however, that nature has shownour sphere principally of sandstone, liranite, which fire cannot consume”
”Do you mean to say, Mr Starr, that lobe?”