e bed among his companions-in-arms. At the
end of the thirteenth century, a license for the mining of "sea coal"
was granted by Henry III. Lastly, towards the end of the same century,
mention is made of the Scotch and Welsh beds.

It was about this time that Simon Ford's ancestors penetrated into the
bowels of Caledonian earth, and lived there ever after, from father to
son. They were but plain miners. They labored like convicts at the work
of extracting the precious combustible. It is even believed that the
coal miners, like the salt-makers of that period, were actual slaves.

However that might have been, Simon Ford was proud of belonging to this
ancient family of Scotch miners. He had worked diligently in the same
place where his ancestors had wielded the pick, the crowbar, and the
mattock. At thirty he was overman of the Dochart pit, the most important
in the Aberfoyle colliery. He was devoted to his trade. During long
years he zealously performed his duty. His only grief had been to
perceive the bed becoming impoverished, and to see the hour approaching
when the seam would be exhausted.

It was then he devoted himself to the search for new veins in all the
Aberfoyle pits, which communicated underground one with another. He
had had the good luck to discover several during the last period of
the working. His miner's instinct assisted him marvelously, and the
engineer, James Starr, appreciated him highly. It might be said that
he divined the course of seams in the depths of the coal mine as a
hydroscope reveals springs in the bowels of the earth. He was par
excellence the type of a miner whose whole existence is indissolubly
connected with that of his mine. He had lived there from his birth, and
now that the works were abandoned he wished to live there still. His son
Harry foraged for the subterranean housekeeping; as for himself, during
those ten years he had not been ten times above ground.

"Go up there! What is the good?" he would say, and refused to leave his
black domain. The place was remarkably healthy, subject to an equable
temperature; the old overman endured neither the heat of summer nor
the cold of winter. His family enjoyed good health; what more could he
desire?

But at heart he felt depressed. He missed the former animation,
movement, and life in the well-worked pit. He was, however, supported by
one fixed idea. "No, no! the mine is not exhausted!" he repeated.

And that man would have given seri