poured out the contents of
another, which must by some mysterious means or other have got into her
dream.

"Well, sleepyhead!" exclaimed Archie, "did you condescend to wake at
last? Do you know how long you have been sleeping?"

Minnie looked round in half-awakened surprise.

The curtains were drawn, the gas-jets lit, and the supper on the table,
nearly finished too.

"Why did you allow me to sleep so long?" asked Minnie in rather an
injured tone.

"As to that," replied Archie, "I'd have wakened you fast enough--you
know my usual accommodating spirit--but papa would not hear of it."

"And really you did look so uncommonly tired," added Ned, "that we all
thought it a charity to let you go on. I hope it was a pleasant
dream--you seemed to do a great deal of talking during it."

Minnie laughed, and taking her seat at the table proceeded to entertain
them with an account of it, and its absurd termination, which was
received with shouts of laughter, and Minnie was glad to observe that
her father joined them in their merriment without the appearance of
force or strain, which she had noticed on similar occasions during the
last few weeks.

"But what put the miners in your head?" He enquired curiously, when they
were at last sober again.

"I suppose it must have been with hearing so much about them for some
time back, and we were talking about them down in the Hollow this
afternoon. I knew you were trying to satisfy them, and I was bothering
myself because I could do nothing when things were going wrong."

"Well, if all that was on your mind, I hardly wonder at your dreaming of
miners," remarked Mr. Kimberly smiling.

"And highly complimented the miners may think themselves," put in
Archie.

"Well, as it turns out," continued Mr. Kimberly, "you needn't have
worried yourself quite so much about your inability, seeing you have
already accomplished a very great deal--you and your young friends who
help you."

"How?" exclaimed Minnie, eagerly, "we seem to be able to do nothing just
now--the only time we could do any real good--"

"Never mind that at the present moment," interrupted Archie, "let us
hear papa's story."

"Then you must know in the first place that the discontent among the
miners is stirred up by a few men who, not content with bringing poverty
and hardship upon themselves, seek to draw others into it also, and seem
never to be so happy as when raising strife of one kind or another. I
know that th