bargain. Only have it here, at Barborough,
because it's a pretty place, and in vacation time it
doesn't matter to the lawyers where the
chambers are in which they earn fees. All the
hotels were fighting to have them, but none of
the rooms were large enough, so they took this
hall at an exorbitant price, and occupy it
alternately with horse-trainers, itinerant showmen,
and the watering-place band. All the
books on the orchestra-table yonder are plans,
and maps, and estimates; the mouths of the pits
—and precious hungry mouths many of them
seem to be—the workings of the shafts, and the
direction of the waters, have all been explained,
and contradicted, and explained again. The
arbitrators look wise as owls, and ask a question
now and then, to keep up appearances.
One of them, you see, is already listening with
his eyes shut, and will afterwards go up to
the hotel and, I suppose, go odd man among
themselves as to which way they shall
decide. Can't please both parties, of course;
and as it's not like a prize-fight, where the
umpires are battered by the losers, they can
sleep with easy minds, take their port after
dinner, their sea-bathing in the morning, and
be happy."

Thus the sea-side gossip, whose acquaintance
I have made at a Barborough table d'hôte,
professes to represent the public opinion of the
promenade. That any set of people should
deliberately set themselves to useful work in this
lovely, idle, flirting, scandal-mongering pleasure-
place, is to the ball frequenters and promenade
loungers so great a marvel that they feel
positively annoyed. Industry is resented as a slur
upon the habits of the community, and the
arbitration party are all canvassed in a cynical
spirit by the flaunting damsels and their week-
old adorers, who consider Barborough their
own.

Many months later, and in a thoroughly coal
county, I happen to be told of the fissure in
the ground called " the crack," and am asked to
remember the " Barborough arbitration, which
it settled, you know." It is part of the
hospitable routine of the house I am staying at
to ride or drive daily, and two friends and
myself-- after having driven along black roads
and pathways, made of what is called " slack"
in Derbyshire, and " small coals" in the county
we are in—leave "the crack" to the right,
and stop at a neat little red house to ask for
the sub-manager of the coal-pits. He is away; so
we proceed to the pit counting-house, where a
young gentleman hospitably insists that we
shall go to his lodgings and be refreshed. I now
hear it proposed that we shall descend one of the
coal-pits, and my strongest emotion is a desire
to run away. My two companions represent
respectively the qualities of Vigour and Curiosity,
and I know there will be little hope of escaping
from a long routine of exploration if I once
consent to go down. Warily but jauntily,
as if opposition were out of the question, I
remark, therefore, that " I'll just stroll as far as
Yedingham-on-the-Hill, while you're down, you
know, and will have a sketch of the view ready
by your return." Had I proposed something
dishonourable or dishonest, I could not have
roused a fiercer storm! Why should I break
up the party when I'd pretended so much
interest in the subject, and the trip had
been made to gratify me? Which of us
had talked through dinner yesterday, and
before the girls (a sneer here), of the
Barborough arbitration; and who induced them to
drive out to see "the crack" directly he found
its history and its bearing on the case. Besides,
why should I hold back? What was there to fear?
Clothes? A regular pit-dress would be furnished
me. Heat, smoke, confined air, accidents?
Surely I'd heard of the law of averages, and
knew how utterly impossible it was that
anything should happen-- I shuddered-- while
we were down. In vain I protested that I
didn't want to go, and didn't care to reason
upon it. Vigour clapped me on the back; and
Curiosity reminded me that I ought not to
miss an opportunity of acquiring information.
I agreed with a heavy heart to give up my
pleasant walk and sketching, and to proceed
with the others to our young friend's lodgings
in the little town adjacent. A very funny
little town we find it to be. Its brick houses
are the colour of boiled lobsters, and its roadway
the hue of lobsters in their native state.
It consists of one empty street, and two rows
of back-doors, the houses of which straggle
up a steep hill like a company of soldiers in
Indian file. One or two women are at the
upper windows, summoned there by the strange
sound of footsteps; and one artificially black
man may be seen in the middle distance coming
home to sleep; but there is no other sign
of life. The little tavern has not a single
lounger at its door. The druggist's shop is
drowsiness personified; while its plenteous
display of feeding-bottles, cordials, and soothing
syrups, is not without its bearing.

The population is at work under our feet,
or in bed recruiting after and preparing for
night-work of the same burrowing kind. On
reaching his home, our host and guide leaves us
for a moment, and returns a pantomimic gnome.
A tightly-fitting skull-cap of greasy leather,
with protections for the side-face, which stick
out like monstrously hideous ears, a suit of
dark blue flannel, dingy with use and coal-dust,
and without either beginning or end, but
which seems to have been sewn bodily upon
the frame it covers, and a nose and cheeks
which are liberally smutted, make the illusion
complete; and to say we expected our guide
to give a "back-flapper," and disappear in
the bowels of the earth, or to take a first-floor
window flying, or to suddenly become a
"wheel," is to give a very common-place rendering
of the high-flown expectations his appearance
caused. A certificate, showing him to
have passed the Cambridge middle-class
examination, photographs of engines and pit-gear, and
a well-selected stock of professional books, all
bore testimony to the opposite character of