-barges, and bid them budge.

It was at least a week before Solomon Coe could be induced to open his
lips before Richard, beyond the utterance of a few pithy sentences; not
that the smouldering embers of jealousy had been fanned in the mean
time--for Richard had been prudence itself in his behavior to Harry--but
because the miner could not comprehend the young fellow, and therefore
distrusted him. The light and airy manners, which were as natural to
Richard as was John Trevethick's ponderous cunning or his own
self-satisfied reticence, seemed to Solomon mere affectation, and even
his appearance effeminate and dandified; but when he saw that he wore no
other air when conversing with the pitmen of Dunloppel--an expedition
undertaken with himself at Richard's special invitation--and marked how
actively he climbed the tall, steep ladders, and how fearlessly he
trusted himself to the rope, he acquitted him of such artful fopperies.
Of Richard's intelligence he had formed a good opinion from the time
when the latter had enlisted himself upon his side in the argument
concerning superstition; and it flattered his vanity to find so sensible
and accomplished a young fellow deferring to his opinion upon all
practical points, and apparently desirous of obtaining his views upon
them.

There was one subject, the experience of his early years, upon which
Solomon was never averse to descant, could he once be got to talk at
all; and it was a certain token--as one, at least, of the company well
knew--that his prejudice against Richard was quite surmounted when
Solomon began to unfold to him, over their punch in the bar parlor, the
annals of his underground career. Often had he done so to Harry--like
another Othello (and almost as swarthy) narrating his adventures to his
Desdemona--but never had she been so pleased to listen as now, when she
needed but to seem to hear, and, without the penalty of reply, could
feed her eyes upon young Richard's listening face. It is hard when, in
the race for woman's favor, one has to waste one's breath in making the
running for one's rival.

And yet the talk of Solomon Coe was well worth listening to. He told of
the great war which is always being waged by man beneath the earth
against the powers of Water, and Fire, and Foul Air, and of the daring
deeds he had seen wrought against them. He told of coal-pits that had
been on fire from time immemorial, above which no snow would lie, by
reason of the heat