me tell them--God knows how often!--the story of how you carried the
pipe of the air-pump into the gallery of the Bondavara mine, and how
we all thought you were a dead man. Women and children hold their
breath while I tell it. I believe I do tell that story well, for they
know it by heart, and yet they cannot but listen. They take it in
different ways; but this girl, I have noticed her, she covers up her
face and cries the whole time."

"And is she a modest girl?"

"To ascertain this point we had to call a jury of married women. They
couldn't bring forward a single charge against her. Then we got the
girls together, and we pressed them very close, if there was anything
with the young men, but they all said--no. And there was no need for
them to deny, for a peasant girl is fitly mated with a miner, and if
he wants her he can have her."

They had now reached the colliery, and went into the station-house,
which stood at the corner of the branch railroad. There was now
another line, which ran underground and connected the two collieries.
Here Ivan found a great many of the miners. He sent for the rest, and
told them work was over for the day. Men and women assembled by
degrees, and only one group of girls still remained working. These had
agreed not to leave off until they had driven their load of coals to
the coal-hill, which lay between the entrance to the quarry gallery
and the station-house where Ivan sat waiting. He could not see the
girls; he could only hear their clear voices as they called to one
another to make haste and get the work finished.

Some one began to sing. The melody was familiar to Ivan--one of those
sad Slav airs in which the singer seems on the brink of tears; and the
voice was sweet and tuneful as a bell, full, too, of feeling.

"Say when I smoothed thy hair,
Showed I not tender care?
Say when I dressed my child,
Was I not fond and mild?"

Ivan's face clouded. "Why do they sing that air? Why should it be on
the lips of any one? Why not let it fall into oblivion?"

"The girl is coming," said old Paul. "I hear her singing; she is now
coming down the hill with her wheelbarrow."

The next moment the girl appeared upon the summit of the coal-hill.
With a run she had shoved her wheelbarrow forward and emptied the
contents with extraordinary dexterity; the big lumps of coal rolled
down the hill. She was a young, well-developed girl in a blue jacket
and a short petticoat; but this