, next, an' much good all your readin'll do you,
then! I warned Jim Rover less'n a week afore he got killed, an' I'm
warnin' you now."

Anton looked up, fearfully, for old Otto had a reputation as a seer,
in the mine, but Clem only laughed.

"I put my faith in following out the safety rules, Otto," he replied,
"not in charms and tricks to keep the goblins away."

The old man, however, was not thus to be set aside. He was as ready to
defend his old-fashioned beliefs as was Clem to advance his modern
theories.

"Experience goes for somethin'," he affirmed stubbornly. "Boy an' man,
I've been below ground for over forty years. I've worked in Germany,
Belgium, France, and all over this country. Just eight years old I
was, when I went down the shaft for the first time; there weren't no
laws, then, to keep youngsters out of a mine.

"I was a door-boy to start off with, openin' doors for the coal-cars
to come through. That meant keeping one's ears open. The loaded cars
come a-roarin' down the slopin' galleries, an', if a kid didn't hear
them, he'd get smashed between the coal car an' the door. Even when he
did hear them, he had to jump lively, or he'd get nipped, anyhow.

"On the other side o' the door it wasn't much better, for the empty
cars were hauled up the slope o' the mine galleries by donkey power,
an', if a kid didn't hear the whistle o' the donkey driver, he'd get
his head clouted an' would be fined two days' pay beside.

"There warn't no eight-hours' day, then. We worked a shift o' twelve
hours, an' the miners didn't stop between for meals--just took their
grub in bites while they went on holin' coal. All piece-work it was in
them days, an' every miner holed, spragged (or timbered), picked and
loaded his own coal. The more stuff he got out, the more pay. The men
didn't get any too much money, either, an' if a miner wanted to have a
decent pay-check at the end o' the week, he warn't goin' to be
hindered by havin' any trouble with cars. The poor kid at the door got
it comin' to him from all sides.

"It's different now in coal-mines to what it was then. We hadn't no
electric plant to run ventilatin' fans for keepin' the air fit to
breathe. Nowadays, a man can be nigh as comfortable below ground as he
can be above; but, when I was a kid, the air in a mine was hot, an'
heavy, an' sleepy-like.

"After breathin' that air for nine or ten hours, it was hard to keep
awake. You'd see the pit-boys comin' up out o' the