'Oh, Miss Anne!' cried Tim; 'it will kill poor Stephen, if it come upon
him sudden like. I know the way through the old pit to where poor little
Nan has fallen; and I'll go and find her. The roof's dropped in, and only
a boy could creep along. But who's to tell Stevie? Oh, Miss Anne,
couldn't you go down with me, and tell him gently your own self?'
'Yes, I will go,' said Miss Anne, weeping.
Underground, in those low, dark, pent-up galleries, lighted only here and
there by a glimmering lamp, the colliers were busy at their labours,
unconscious of all that was happening overhead. Stephen was at work at
some distance from the others, loading a train of small square waggons
with the blocks of coal which he and Black Thompson had picked out of the
earth. He was singing softly to himself the hymns that he and little Nan
had been learning during the summer in the Red Gravel Pit; and he smiled
as he fancied that little Nan was perhaps singing them over as well by
the cabin fire. He did not know, poor boy, that at that moment Tim was
creeping through the winding, blocked-up passages, so long untrodden, to
the bottom of the old shaft; and that when he returned he would be
bearing in his arms a sad, sad burden, upon which his tears would fall
unavailingly.
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