Chapter 5 - Page 2

repeat all these stories to herself, and so she did,
most conscientiously, so as not to let the old traditions be lost.

Even had Simon and Harry Ford been as credulous as their companions,
they would not have abandoned the mine to the imps and fairies.
For ten years, without missing a single day, obstinate and immovable
in their convictions, the father and son took their picks, their sticks,
and their lamps. They went about searching, sounding the rock
with a sharp blow, listening if it would return a favor-able sound.
So long as the soundings had not been pushed to the granite of the
primary formation, the Fords were agreed that the search, unsuccessful
to-day, might succeed to-morrow, and that it ought to be resumed.
They spent their whole life in endeavoring to bring Aberfoyle back
to its former prosperity. If the father died before the hour of success,
the son was to go on with the task alone.

It was during these excursions that Harry was more particularly
struck by certain phenomena, which he vainly sought to explain.
Several times, while walking along some narrow cross-alley,
he seemed to hear sounds similar to those which would be produced
by violent blows of a pickax against the wall.

Harry hastened to seek the cause of this mysterious work.
The tunnel was empty. The light from the young miner's

lamp, thrown on the wall, revealed no trace of any recent work with pick
or crowbar. Harry would then ask himself if it was not the effect
of some acoustic illusion, or some strange and fantastic echo.
At other times, on suddenly throwing a bright light into a
suspicious-looking cleft in the rock, he thought he saw a shadow.
He rushed forward. Nothing, and there was no opening to permit
a human being to evade his pursuit!

Twice in one month, Harry, whilst visiting the west end of the pit,
distinctly heard distant reports, as if some miner had exploded
a charge of dynamite. The second time, after many careful researches,
he found that a pillar had just been blown up.

By the light of his lamp, Harry carefully examined
the place attacked by the explosion. It had not been made
in a simple embankment of stones, but in a mass of schist,
which had penetrated to this depth in the coal stratum.
Had the object of the explosion been to discover a new vein?
Or had someone wished simply to destroy this portion of the mine?
Thus he questioned, and when he made known this occurrence
to his father, neither could the old overman nor he himself
answer the question in a satisfactory way.

"It is very queer," Harry often repeated. "The presence of an
unknown being in the mine seems impossible, and yet there can
be no doubt about it. Does someone besides ourselves wish to find