Chapter 1

CHAPTER I CONTRADICTORY LETTERS

To Mr. F. R. Starr, Engineer, 30 Canongate, Edinburgh.

IF Mr. James Starr will come to-morrow to the Aberfoyle coal-mines,
Dochart pit, Yarrow shaft, a communication of an interesting nature
will be made to him.

"Mr. James Starr will be awaited for, the whole day,
at the Callander station, by Harry Ford, son of the old
overman Simon Ford."

"He is requested to keep this invitation secret."

Such was the letter which James Starr received by the first post,
on the 3rd December, 18--, the letter bearing the Aberfoyle postmark,
county of Stirling, Scotland.

The engineer's curiosity was excited to the highest pitch.
It never occurred to him to doubt whether this letter might
not be a hoax. For many years he had known Simon Ford,
one of the former foremen of the Aberfoyle mines, of which he,
James Starr, had for twenty years, been the manager, or,
as he would be termed in English coal-mines, the viewer.
James Starr was a strongly-constituted man, on whom his fifty-five
years weighed no more heavily than if they had been forty.
He belonged to an old Edinburgh family, and was one of its
most distinguished members. His labors did credit to the body
of engineers who are gradually devouring the carboniferous
subsoil of the United Kingdom, as much at Cardiff and Newcastle,
as in the southern counties of Scotland. However, it was more
particularly in the depths of the mysterious mines of Aberfoyle,
which border on the Alloa mines and occupy part of the county
of Stirling, that the name of Starr had acquired the greatest renown.
There, the greater part of his existence had been passed.
Besides this, James Starr belonged to the Scottish Antiquarian Society,
of which he had been made president. He was also included
amongst the most active members of the Royal Institution; and the
Edinburgh Review frequently published clever articles signed by him.
He was in fact one of those practical men to whom is due the prosperity
of England. He held a high rank in the old capital of Scotland,
which not only from a physical but also from a moral point of view,
well deserves the name of the Northern Athens.

We know that the English have given to their vast extent of
coal-mines a very significant name. They very justly call them
the "Black Indies," and these Indies have contributed perhaps
even more than the Eastern Indies to swell the surprising wealth
of the United Kingdom.

At this period, the limit of time assigned by professional men
for the exhaustion of coal-mines was far distant and there was
no dread of scarcity. There were still extensive mines to be
worked in the two Americas. The manu-factories, appropriated
to so many