have occurred to every man alive, and sent him thither.

In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than
in collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except
at rises, winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their
depth does not exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have
anticipated the other dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take
and down-take, was a ladder, either of the mine, or of the fugitives,
and I was able to descend without difficulty, having dressed myself in a
house at the village in a check flannel shirt, a pair of two-buttoned
trousers with circles of leather at the knees, thick boots, and a
miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into which fitted a
straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, and
also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months,
I lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the
treasure of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs,
Pomeranian women in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the
Khirgiz, the Bonze, the Imaum, and almost every type of man.

* * * * *

One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at
Barnard, come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a
reluctance, to where I was born; for I said I would go and see my sister
Ada, and--the other old one. I leaned and loitered a long time on the
bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, which is heavy with waving wood,
and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees sweeping round the
mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, where I wished
to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a sweet
strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow--the shadow of