The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1892-02-17 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

ISWISP. "She shall never marry Marwood while I am alive. God made me same as him," I beard him mutter to himself, and then he went out. I saw him no more that night, and I didn't let on to Betty that I bad overheard them. The next day we were all underground as usuaL Somehow or other, Miitty, Marwood, and me found ourselves pretty close together. H seemed to me to be banging on to dim in a way I didn't like, hearing what I had heard, and I kept as close to both as I well could, keeping my tools ready to hand, and watching the dwarf out of the corner of may eye. Jim never looked taller, nor handsomer,, nor straighter than he looked that day. Happy he was as C lark, whistling over his work, and laughing as light-hearted as could be. I could not be light, for there was a curious weight on my mind, a sense as it some mischief was going to happen before nightfall. I noticed that the dwarf scarce took his eyes off Jim, except at twelve o'clock, when we stopped for our bits of food, and then lie ant in a corner by himself under a truck and scribbled on a piece of paper, with a queer sort of smile on his face. I had the shivers more than once, for he looked so evil and so black among the coal heaps, and every now and then lie would talk to himself in Welsh, which I had never heard him do before, and it turned my blood cold, for it sounded for all the world like the jabberings of Old Nick. In the afternoon we got down to a lower level. It was a dangerous part of the mine, as we :ill knew, and we kept our Davy lamps pretty tight, I can tell you. "There's fire-damp about here," said one of the men. "Amid a spark would settle the lot of us, would tit it ?" said the dwarf. They were almost the first words be bad spoken, and the expression of Ida face as lie said it made my heart give a turn. " Ah ! that it would," Jim answered. A kind of sick fear came over me that our lives were in the dwarf's power, and hanging, as it might be, on a thread. Such a longing came over me for a mouthful of fresh air and the sight of the open sky as I had never had in-the miiics before. People warming their toes at their handsome fires on the winter nights don't know what it means to us chaps who have the digging of the coals in the depths of the earth and who put flesh and blood in jeopardy every l:cour to do Nothing more was said about fire-damp, however ; and that day, the longest I had ever known, came round to six o'clock without an explosion. The cages were ready for us to get up to the top of the shaft, and most of the men had gone. "You go now," says I to the dwarf. "No," he answers, "I'm going to stay a little overtime to-night. You all go on and send the cage down again for me. And look here, give this to your sister Hetty, will you, and tell her to open it." He put a bundle into my hand, tied up in a handkerchief. I took it gingerly enough, for with such suspicions in my mind, I half expected it, might go off in my face somehow. "What are you afraid of ? "he asks, sharp. "Nothing," I says, as sharp. And we touched the signal rope, and up went Jim and me, and the dwarf stood underneath and turned his face up, watching us out of eight. Well, I felt more comfortable when we put our feet on firm ground on top of the shaft, and had sent the cage down again for him. " Wonder what's in that bundle ?' says Jim. "Maybe, Betty will tell you come time," I replies, little thinking how it concerned him. I took it home, and called Betty to open it. Our cottage wasn't far from the pits, and it couldn't have been above ten minutes since the dwarf bad put it into my hand. She undid the knot, and there—if you would believe it—were the title deeds of his cottage, and a dozen sovereigns tied up in a bit of minim, and the scrap of paper I. had seen him scribble under the truck. There wore these words on it : " What is here is for you. 'Ugly and miserable' lam, but wicked' lam not. I said you shouldn't marry him while I was alive, and I shall k isp my word. Think kindly of a dwarf if you can. God made me, as well as him." We hadn't got to the end of the poor dirty little letter, when we heard a sound that made our hearts stand still. A long, dull roaring, Blinking the floor we stood on, as if it was thunder under our feet. "An explosion in the mine !" says Betty, with a face as white as chalk. We rushed out. All Nine Pita was out, men, women, and children screaming and ruining to the shaft head: There we could see what lint happened plain enough. Hundreds of tons of solid earth and melt and rubble had fallen in. and *icier it all was the dead crushed body of that poor creature we bad helped to send from the world. I shudder when I. think of it now, though I'm a strong man. It WAS no use trying to dig him out. Be know when lie opened his Davy lamp—and he must have opened it—that human help could. never reach him there. Be knew, when ho watched me and Jim go up in the cage, that be was staying behind for his death, and he went Le it of his own free will for the love of my sister Hetty. She cried about it for a week, and said ehe should never be happy again. But I think she is happy now, for she married Jim come the Eager after, and they live in Mattis cottage still, and the garden is all abloom with flowers. I've turned the story over and over its my mind for these fifteen years, and I think its the saddest I ever heard, though I scarce know what to make of it now. Some eay he wasn't a hero, but just went and committed suicide. Let that stand for Judgment Day to settle. I have learnt one thing out of it, and it is, that God has given them misshapen creatures hearts and feelings like ours, and woe be to the heart nod the tongue that dares set that aside.