But the colliers do not think it so, nor their wives in the
scattered village beyond; they do not consider the lime and coal works a
blot, for their living depends upon them, and they may rightly say, 'As
for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it
were fire.'
Even Stephen Fern, who would a thousand times rather work out on the free
hillside than in the dark passages underground, does not think it a pity
that the Botfield pit has been discovered at the foot of the mountains.
It is nearly seven o'clock in the evening, and he is coming over the brow
of the green dell, with his long shadow stretching down it. A very long
shadow it is for so small a figure to cast, for if we wait a minute or
two till Stephen draws nearer, we shall see that he is no strong, large
man, but a slight, thin, stooping boy, bending rather wearily under a
sack of coals, which he is carrying on his shoulders, and pausing now and
then to wipe his heated forehead with the sleeve of his collier's flannel
jacket. When he lifts up the latch of his home we will enter with him,
and see the inside of the hut at Fern's Hollow.
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