" and it was immediately opened by a boy who sat behind it
and closed it again as soon as they had passed. Each of these boys had
besides his little flaring lamp, such as everybody in the mine carried,
a can of oil for refilling it, a lunch-pail and a tin water-bottle, and
each of them spent from eight to ten hours at his post without leaving
it.

Finally Derrick and the mine boss came to a junction of several
galleries, a sort of mine cross-roads, and the former was told that this
was to be his headquarters, for here was where the trains were made up,
and from here the empty cars were distributed. At the farther end of
each of the headings leading from this junction two or more miners were
at work drilling, blasting, and picking tons of coal from between its
enclosing walls of slate. They were all doing their best to fill the
cars which it was Derrick's business to haul to the junction and replace
with empty ones. There were also a number of miners at work in breasts,
or openings at the sides of the gangways that followed the slant of the
coal vein, who expected to be supplied with empty cars and have their
loaded ones taken away by Derrick. These breast miners filled their cars
very quickly, as the moment they loosened the coal it slid down the
slaty incline, above which it had been bedded, to a wooden chute on the
edge of the gangway that discharged it directly into them.

As Derrick was told of all this, he realized that he and Harry Mule
would have to get around pretty fast to attend to these duties, and
supply empty cars as they were needed.

What interested him most in this part of the mine was an alcove hewn
from solid rock near the junction, in which was a complete smithy. It
had forge, anvil, and bellows, and was presided over by a blacksmith
named Job Taskar, as ugly a looking fellow, Derrick thought, as he had
ever seen. Here the mules were shod, tools were sharpened, and broken
iron-work was repaired. It was a busy place, and its glowing forge,
together with the showers of sparks with which Job Taskar's lusty blows
almost constantly surrounded the anvil, made it appear particularly
cheerful and bright amid the all-pervading darkness. Nearly every man
and boy in that section of the mine was obliged to visit the smithy at
least once during working hours. Thus it became a great news centre, and
offered temptations to many of its visitors to linger long after their
business was finished.

After pointing out