o become Christians. Nothing is strange
in Giridih, and the stories of the pits, the raffle of conversation that
a man picks up as he passes, are quite in keeping with the place. Thanks
to the law, which enacts that an Englishman must look after the native
miners, and if any one be killed must explain satisfactorily that the
accident was not due to preventable causes, the death-roll is kept
astoundingly low. In one "bad" half-year, six men out of the five
thousand were killed, in another four, and in another none at all. As
has been said before, a big accident would scare off the workers, for,
in spite of the age of the mines--nearly thirty years--the hereditary
pitman has not yet been evolved. But to small accidents the men are
orientally apathetic. Read of a death among the five thousand:--

A gang has been ordered to cut clay for the luting of the coke furnaces.
The clay is piled in a huge bank in the open sunlight. A coolie hacks
and hacks till he has hewn out a small cave with twenty foot of clay
above him. Why should he trouble to climb up the bank and bring down the
eave of the cave? It is easier to cut in. The Sirdar of the gang is
watching round the shoulder of the bank. The coolie cuts lazily as he
stands. Sunday is very near, and he will get gloriously drunk in Giridih
Bazaar with his week's earnings. He digs his own grave stroke by stroke,
for he has not sense enough to see that undercut clay is dangerous. He
is a Sonthal from the hills. There is a smash and a dull thud, and his
grave has shut down upon him in an avalanche of heavy-caked clay.

The Sirdar calls to the Babu of the Ovens, and with the promptitude of
his race the Babu loses his head. He runs puffily, without giving
orders, anywhere, everywhere. Finally he runs to the Sahib's house. The
Sahib is at the other end of the collieries. He runs back. The Sahib has
gone home to wash. Then his indiscretion strikes him. He should have
sent runners--fleet-footed boys from the coal-screening gangs. He sends
them and they fly. One catches the Sahib just changed after his bath.
"There is a man dead at such a place"--he gasps, omitting to say whether
it is a surface or a pit accident. On goes the grimy pit-kit, and in
three minutes the Sahib's dogcart is flying to the place indicated.

They have dug out the Sonthal. His head is smashed in, spine and
breastbone are broken, and the gang-Sirdar, bowing double, throws the
blame of the accident on the poor, shape