hey were not ready, when would they be ready?
"Do not delay, do not delay, my friends," he said, in a voice which went
to the hearts of many of his hearers.

Among them was Samuel Kempson. From that day he became a serious-minded
man, while he did his best to show by his life that his heart was
changed. Others again listened, but went away and continued in the same
bad habits in which they had before indulged.

Dick was eager for Monday morning, when the pit would be again at work,
that he might go and look for David. Long before daybreak he was on
foot on his way to the pit's mouth. He had to wait, however, till the
under-viewers and deputy over-men had gone down to see the condition of
the pit, whether it was fit for people to work in, or whether any stream
of bad air had burst out likely to kill or injure any one. At last the
mine was reported safe, and Dick, and the other boys, and several of the
men were allowed to descend. Dick eagerly inquired of the deputy
over-men if they had seen anything of David. No; they did not even
think that he was in the pit, was their reply. Dick remembered that the
missionary had said "that those who trust in God and do right need fear
no evil."

"That's what I am doing," he said to himself, as he took his Davy's lamp
from the lamp room, and grasped his stick. "I don't fear the black
bogies or any other creatures such as Bill Hagger is so fond of talking
about. May be, as the missionary says, there are no such things, and
David thinks that it was Bill Hagger himself who frightened me." With
such thoughts, brave little Dick strengthened his mind, and braced up
his heart as he walked on.

From the gate-road, or chief gallery, roads opened off on either side.
Dick made up his mind to go to the farthest end, and then to work down
one side, shouting as he went along, and then the other, dropping his
bits of paper. He walked as fast as he could, but to move along with a
mass of rock and earth and coal a thousand feet thick overhead, is not
like walking across the green fields with the blue sky above one, and
the fresh air blowing, and the sun shining, and the birds singing. Dick
had only walls of coal on either side, or pillars of coal, or caves out
of which the coal had been hewn, or the mouths of other long passages,
some leading upwards, some downwards to other levels. He had a black
roof of rock above him, and black ground under his feet. "Anybody seen
anything of Dav