mean they die young in the mines? That is what I have been told."

"Yes, Signore, in their twenty-eighth year the people are at the end of
life; at the age of twelve they are already stooped and wrinkled old men
and women. For the children it is most terrible; it is they who climb up
the high ladders out of the pits in the earth--it gives one a foretaste
of inferno to see such things. _Cosi Dio, m' ajuti_, it is true! Yet so
they live--otherwise they must die. What can we do? Since the Santa
Maria does not intervene, the poor must work or starve. They have not
the money to go away to the country beyond the sea, to America, the land
of plenty! If some of the rich abundance might be brought to my
people----" He shook his head, looking, it seemed, beyond the white
walls of the room, as though he saw a vision.

Then slowly, carefully, Derby explained. It was to bring some of the
customs of the land of plenty that he had come. He would pay the
men--the father, the brother, the big son--more money than had been
earned hitherto by the whole family. No, His Eminence did not
understand--the work was not to be harder, but easier! And for the
reason that he had already explained: Machinery would take the place of
children's hands; steel pipes, and not human beings, would descend into
the stifling fumes. He wanted to get a few intelligent men to go with
their families to the deserted village clustered about the "Little
Devil."

Still the old man sat, looking straight before him.

"All that you tell me, Signore," he said at last, his voice echoing a
sweetness, a cheerful patience that was doubtless the keynote to his
nature--"it all sounds very beautiful; but, indeed, it cannot be! The
great Duke Scorpa has given the matter much thought. The mine owners
cannot pay the people more--there is scarcely any profit as it is. The
duke has often told me this himself, so I know it to be true."

Derby thereupon said that the great Duke Scorpa had doubtless done
everything possible, and that under the old method there had been no
help for the conditions, but--and again he expressed himself as clearly
as possible--with the new method and with machinery, one man could do
the work of many. So the wages might be trebled and yet the mines be
made to pay.

As Derby talked, a faint color mounted in the cheeks of the
archbishop--his eyes grew eagerly wistful, and at last he leaned forward
in his chair, his voice almost breathless as he asked, "C