anding firmly for ever so many
years, suddenly crumbled into splinters and the roof fell on the
woman, hurting her so badly that she died soon after she was taken to
the top.

"Just after the roof fell, so Father said, he and all the rest of the
miners saw a band of knockers gathered around the pile of fallen roof
and pointing at the figure of the woman crushed beneath. He said the
knockers were laughing so loudly that some of the miners heard the
echoes away at the other end of the mine."

"And do you believe that, Anton?" queried Clem, incredulously.

"Father saw them himself," the boy replied, in a tone of finality.

"Then there's the gas sprites," Otto went on, pleased at having found
a sympathetic listener. "I've never seen 'em myself, but there's
plenty that have. In a mine where I used to work, in Belgium, there
was a man who could see 'em as plain as I see you or Anton. That was
his job, and he was paid handsomely, too.

"He could walk through a gallery, either in a workin' or an abandoned
mine, an' could tell right away if there was fire damp, or white damp,
or black damp, or stink damp, in the workin's. He could see the gas
sprites himself an' give warnin' where men had better not go. He
didn't have to carry a safety lamp, nor chemical apparatus, nor cages
of mice an' canaries, the way folks do, now. He just walked into the
mine an' saw the sprites. He was friendly to 'em, an' they never did
him no harm."

"What were they like, Otto?" queried Anton.

"Shadows o' women," the old man replied promptly. "Fire damp, this
diviner used to say, looked like a figure veiled in red, black damp
was veiled in black wi' white edges, white damp was bluish, an' stink
damp was yellow. When the gas was faint, all he could see was just the
glow o' the colors, very dim; but when the gas was strong then the
shapes o' the women were bold an' clear.

"The gas sprites, bein' women, catch an' hold the young men an' the
single men more easily than old an' married miners. You don't deny
that single men are more often killed by damps than married men, do
you, Clem?"

The young miner looked uncomfortable at the question.

"That's a general belief, and statistics seem to back it up," he
admitted. "But I don't see that it has anything to do with your goblin
ideas, Otto. It's just because the single men, generally, are the
youngest, and they haven't become as immune to the poisonous gases of
the mine as men who have been working