for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it
were fire.'

Even Stephen Fern, who would a thousand times rather work out on the free
hillside than in the dark passages underground, does not think it a pity
that the Botfield pit has been discovered at the foot of the mountains.
It is nearly seven o'clock in the evening, and he is coming over the brow
of the green dell, with his long shadow stretching down it. A very long
shadow it is for so small a figure to cast, for if we wait a minute or
two till Stephen draws nearer, we shall see that he is no strong, large
man, but a slight, thin, stooping boy, bending rather wearily under a
sack of coals, which he is carrying on his shoulders, and pausing now and
then to wipe his heated forehead with the sleeve of his collier's flannel
jacket. When he lifts up the latch of his home we will enter with him,
and see the inside of the hut at Fern's Hollow.




CHAPTER II.

THE DYING FATHER.


Stephen stepped over the threshold into a low, dark room, which was
filled with smoke, from a sudden gust of the wind as it swept over the
roof of the hut. On one side of the grate, which was made of some
half-hoops of iron fastened into the rock, there was a very aged man,
childish and blind with years, who was crouching towards the fire, and
talking and chuckling to himself. A girl, about a year older than