Chapter 4 - Page 2

of extracting the precious combustible.
It is even believed that the coal miners, like the salt-makers
of that period, were actual slaves.

However that might have been, Simon Ford was proud
of belonging to this ancient family of Scotch miners.
He had worked diligently in the same place where his ancestors
had wielded the pick, the crowbar, and the mattock.
At thirty he was overman of the Dochart pit, the most important
in the Aberfoyle colliery. He was devoted to his trade.
During long years he zealously performed his duty.
His only grief had been to perceive the bed becoming impoverished,
and to see the hour approaching when the seam would be exhausted.

It was then he devoted himself to the search for new veins
in all the Aberfoyle pits, which communicated underground
one with another. He had had the good luck to
discover several during the last period of the working.
His miner's instinct assisted him marvelously, and the engineer,
James Starr, appreciated him highly. It might be said that
he divined the course of seams in the depths of the coal mine
as a hydroscope reveals springs in the bowels of the earth.
He was par excellence the type of a miner whose whole
existence is indissolubly connected with that of his mine.
He had lived there from his birth, and now that the works
were abandoned he wished to live there still. His son Harry
foraged for the subterranean housekeeping; as for himself,
during those ten years he had not been ten times above ground.

"Go up there! What is the good?" he would say, and refused
to leave his black domain. The place was remarkably healthy,
subject to an equable temperature; the old overman endured
neither the heat of summer nor the cold of winter.
His family enjoyed good health; what more could he desire?

But at heart he felt depressed. He missed the former
animation, movement, and life in the well-worked pit.
He was, however, supported by one fixed idea. "No, no! the mine
is not exhausted!" he repeated.

And that man would have given serious offense who could have ventured
to express before Simon Ford any doubt that old Aberfoyle would
one day revive! He had never given up the hope of discovering
some new bed which would restore the mine to its past splendor.
Yes, he would willingly, had it been necessary, have resumed
the miner's pick, and with his still stout arms vigorously attacked
the rock. He went through the dark galleries, sometimes alone,
sometimes with his son, examining, searching for signs of coal,
only to return each day, wearied, but not in despair, to the cottage.

Madge, Simon's faithful companion, his "gude-wife," to use
the Scotch term, was a tall, strong, comely woman. Madge had no
wish to