table for which we were bound and beyond
which there was some faint hope of finding the imprisoned men. The sound
of our picks elicited no response though we paused more than once to
listen, but the wall being at length broken down, we entered the stable
and I was the first of the party to perceive the dead body of a man who
sat leaning against the wall of coal looking for all the world like a
wax-work figure.

I was holding a candle to the dead man's face and we were all gathered
round when the light went out suddenly as if it had been quenched in
water. In a second we were in pitch darkness and our leader called out
"Choke damp--back for your lives," and in the pitchy darkness back
we struggled. I have forgotten to say that water was running down the
air-way like a little mill-stream, though it was barely over shoe-tops.
We scrambled on with the deadly gas following us, sucked and drawn along
by the draught of air. I was last but one and was saved many of the
bruises and excoriations which befell the leader. The warning voice
would come out of the darkness, "duck here," or "hands and knees," and
on we toiled, panting and perspiring, until we reached the shaft and
were all drawn up again. I dried myself roughly before a roaring fire in
the hovel of the mine and then made all haste to the beer shop where I
mounted my horse and rode full tilt into Birmingham. The paper had gone
to press early that night and the press was already clanking when I rode
into Pinfold Street and sat down, all muddy and dishevelled as I was,
to dictate my copy to a shorthand writer. What I had to say filled two
large type columns and with the copy of the paper in my pocket, I rode
back to Pelsall. There I found Forbes at breakfast--he asked where I had
been and I produced the paper and showed my work in silence. He read
it through without a word of comment, good, bad or indifferent, laid it
down upon the table and left the room. I heard him rummaging about in
the chamber overhead and by and by he came down with a portmanteau in
his hand and without a word or a look left the house. I thought that he
was galled to feel that he had been beaten by a novice.

Two years had elapsed when I met him again. I found him by hazard in the
Ludgate Bar, which was then a great resort of the bigger men among the
London journalists. As I entered he sat among a knot of his companions.
Tom Hood was there as I remember, and Henry Sampson, founder of the
_Referee_