old workings let in by a single blow whereby scores and scores of strong men were overwhelmed whose floated about for months in the dark drowned pit before their above ground get at them his speech was somewhat sullen and hesitating and what he said was interrupted by of smoke and of liquor but the of the subject was so absorbing that it needed no of eloquence it interested richard in spite of himself and solomon was not indifferent to the which the yoimg artist s attention conveyed and scarcely needed the entreaties of to persuade him to throw off his native what he forgot and had mentioned in former the landlord i and when became and obscure the other performed the part of chorus or if former had been some gifted and the latter its proprietor he not have taken a greater pride in the exhibition of its talent than did the landlord in these now he would look at richard and nod and wink as though to his special attention to what was coming and now he wave his pipe like a dumb playing slow music to e press the tremendous nature of a perhaps he was impressed by these tales � perhaps he was by a feigned admiration for s and exploits to his choice of a law not ther suited to his harry to do the justice he was by no means so as his and and would express his regrets to richard that it was so hard to get to dismiss and talk about himself it s here yon see explained he behind his hand but in a tone audible to the other tenants of the bar parlor or else he would tell yon how the of tiie pit once fell upon him so as nothing free but his head and bis left hand and yet he never lost his wits in all his agony but told the men where to saw and what to do but he don t like to boast before the then richard taking tho hint inquired of solomon whether any incident striking had ever happened to himself during his experience and solomon replied witb affected carelessness ho not as i know on nothing particular then broke in with what not when you was shut oh yes to be said as though the recollection of the circumstance had only just occurred to him there was that but it was when i was quite a boy i was not quite seventeen when was drowned the poured right in upon it and they have not got the water out of it in places lo this day it was always said that the pit was being worked too near the river but that was thou t about by those as was most concerned and it never disturbed the head of a lad uke me of com se it was in the afternoon of the th of december a date as i am not likely to forget when the thing happened two � one old man and a middle aged one � and myself were at work in a heading together when we heard a noise like thunder that s never says one the lord have mercy on ns cries the other for as i et risk was quite well known though it considered and made a jest of nothing that ever i heard was equal to that noise the waves in here during storm are a whisper to it the whole pit seemed to he roaring in npon us we all ran up tho gallery which fortunately for us had a great bred in the bone slope and down at the end of it we the water pouring in and filling all the us and then pouring in and ours it reached our feet and left ag but a very limited space in which t ie air was compressed when the noise of the hear one another we knew that the whole mine had become a lake by that time and that it would lake months to drain her if she was ever drained we knew that wo were buried alive hundreds of feet beneath the earth and yet we did not quite lose heart there was of hope supposing that the next gallery which was on a higher level than our own was not also we could be got at teu the we did not know the fact that it was more than sixty feet of solid coal and would have taken under ordinary circumstances at four weeks to dig through we only knew that if a door of escape was to open any where it must open there we kept tapping with the heels of our boots at equal intervals against this the b signal explained the landlord with ft wave of bis pipe we felt that if we were once heard and if hard work do it that our mates would save us yet and we encouraged one another as well as we could but presently the oil in our lamps gave out and we were in darkness and then our hope grew indeed we had knocked for four and twenty hours without any reply we did not cease however to discuss the possibilities of escape we knew that all was being done for us that could be done that he of the mine were well executed and that it was known exactly where we were if we were alive at all there were more than a hundred men employed in the lower workings and it was a certainty that not one of them could have escaped death the attention therefore of the would be concentrated npon those parts of the mine that might possibly be left above water on the second night of our imprisonment we heard a distinct reply to our signal the old man who was of our company began lo weep for joy he was doomed as 