apidly to descend, and the fresh comer,
who was still very new at these descents, felt that strange sensation as
the cage rushed down, just as if the whole of the internal organs had
burst out laughing at the fun they were going to have of trying to
frighten their owner's head.

It is not a pleasant sensation, that of a descent into a coal-pit.
There is the rushing noise of the cage, the whirring of wheels, the
constant dripping and plashing sound of falling water, the thudding of
the pump, the stifling feeling of dank heat, the stuffy mist, and joined
to all the knowledge that if that slender thread of wire-rope should
happen to break, the cage would fall perhaps hundreds of feet, and its
occupants be killed. Then, he who descends knows that he is going into
a series of subterranean caves where the gas escapes, that the slightest
contact with a light will explode, burning, slaying, and destroying, and
leaving behind the choke-damp, which is even more deadly in its
insidious effects.

Now Philip Hexton, in making up his mind to take to his father's life,
had readily prepared himself to run all risks, in the hope of soon
lessening them; but after three months' action as deputy
assistant-manager under his father, he had awakened to the fact that all
he had done had been to establish a general feeling of dislike amongst
the men, who, though they did not openly show it, opposed Philip Hexton
all the more by a stubborn, quiet resistance that he found it difficult
to overcome.

It was something unusual for the manager's son to come down upon the
night shift; but, after mastering the various technicalities of the
place, the young deputy had set himself vigorously to work to try and
more rigorously enforce the rules of the mine, many of which, he soon
found, were terribly neglected by the men.

Upon reaching the bottom, Philip saw the party go into a kind of office,
where each was supplied with a locked and lighted Davy-lamp, whose
little wick burned dimly through the wire gauze; and then, as they were
about to shoulder their sharp steel-pointed picks, he said aloud:

"You'll need to be very careful to-night, my lads, for there's a good
deal of gas up in the new four-foot."

The men did not answer, but went sulkily away, leaving Philip to take a
gauze lamp of a larger construction to go and spend a couple of hours
inspecting different parts of the mine, in company with one of the
oldest hands in the pit.

"I wish I co