underground. From his earliest childhood he had been familiar with tales of subterranean terror, and he knew that his father had often foregone a day's work and a day's pay rather than go down the mine-shaft if some evil omen had occurred.

Yet Anton was willing to accept modern ideas, also. Clem was both his protector and his chum, and the boy had a great respect for his older comrade's knowledge and good sense. He was aware, too, that Clem was unusually well informed, for the young fellow was a natural student and was fitting himself for a higher position in the mine by hard reading. This Ohio mine, like many of the American collieries, maintained a free school and an admirable technical library for the use of those workers who wished to better themselves.

The young student miner was zealous in his efforts to promote modern ideas among his comrades, and knew that the old superstitions bred carelessness and a blind belief in Fate. Despite their differences in age and in points of view, he and Otto were warm friends, and he returned the old man's attack promptly.

"So far as Anton's father is concerned, Otto," he said, "it was Jim Rover's carelessness that killed him. He was caught by a falling roof just because he wouldn't take the trouble to make sure that the draw slate overhead was solid before setting to work to undercut the coal. I know that's so, because he told me, just before he died. I was the first one to reach him, after the fall, for I was working in the next room, just around the rib."

"An' who made the draw slate fall, just when Jim Rover was a-standin' right under it? Answer me that, Clem Swinton!"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Every man who's ever handled a coal pick knows that draw slate is apt to work loose. That's one of the dangers of the business. And the danger can be avoided, as you know perfectly well, Otto, if a chap will feel the roof for vibration, with one hand, while he uses the other to tap on the slate with the flat side of a pick. If he won't take the trouble—why, it's his own fault if he gets killed.

"Blaming the 'knockers,' Otto, doesn't hide the fact that nearly a thousand miners get killed in the United States every year, just through their own carelessness."

The old man shook a finger ominously.

"It isn't always the careless ones what get taken," he declared. "Look out for yourself, Clem Swinton; look out for yourself! It's you the knockers'll be after, next, an' much good all your readin'll do you, then! I warned Jim Rover less'n a week afore he got killed, an' I'm warnin' you now."

Anton looked up, fearfully, for old Otto had a reputation as a seer, in the mine, but Clem only laughed.

"I put my faith in following out the safety rules, Otto," he replied, "not in charms and tricks to keep the goblins away."

The old man, however, was not thus to be set aside. He was as ready to defend his old-fashioned beliefs as was Clem to advance his modern theories.

"Experience goes for somethin'," he affirmed stubbornly. "Boy an' man, I've been below ground for over forty years. I've worked in Germany, Belgium, France, and all over this country. Just eight years old I was, when I went down the shaft for the first time; there weren't no laws, then, to keep youngsters out of a mine.

"I was a door-boy to start off with, openin' doors for the coal-cars to come through. That meant keeping one's ears open. The loaded cars come a-roarin' down the slopin' galleries, an', if a kid didn't hear them, he'd get smashed between the coal car an' the door. Even when he did hear them, he had to jump lively, or he'd get nipped, anyhow.

"On the other side o' the door it wasn't much better, for the empty cars were hauled up the slope o' the mine galleries by donkey power, an', if a kid didn't hear the whistle o' the donkey driver, he'd get his head clouted an' would be fined two days' pay beside.

"There warn't no eight-hours' day, then. We worked a shift o' twelve hours, an' the miners didn't stop between for meals—just took their grub in bites while they went on holin' coal. All piece-work it was in them days, an' every miner holed, spragged (or timbered), picked and loaded his own coal. The more stuff he got out, the more pay. The men didn't get any too much money, either, an' if a miner wanted to have a decent pay-check at the end o' the week, he warn't goin' to be hindered by havin' any trouble with cars. The poor kid at the door got it comin' to him from all sides.

"It's different now in coal-mines to what it was then. We hadn't no electric plant to run ventilatin' fans for keepin' the air fit to breathe. Nowadays, a man can be nigh as comfortable below ground as he can be above; but, when I was a kid, the air in a mine was hot, an' heavy, an' sleepy-like.

"After breathin' that air for nine or ten hours, it was hard to keep awake. You'd see the pit-boys comin' up out o' the shaft wi' their eyes all red an' swollen an' achin'. No, it warn't from gas, it was just from rubbin' em to keep em' open. An' rubbin' your eyes with hands all gritty with coal-dust ain't any too good for 'em."

"Well, Otto," the young fellow interrupted, "you can't deny that modern methods have improved all that. There aren't any door-boys in a modern mine. Most of the States in this country have passed laws requiring that all doors through which coal cars pass must be operated automatically. The United States Bureau of Mines keeps a sharp lookout, too. There aren't any donkeys, either, not in up-to-date mines; endless-chain conveyors take the coal from the face where the miner has dug it clear to the mouth of the shaft, and load it into the buckets by a self-tipping device. As for small boys in a mine, as you said yourself, there aren't any, not in the United States, anyhow."

"I'm not denyin' that minin' has got easier," was the grudging reply, "it'd be a wonder if it hadn't. What I'm sayin' is that all your newfangled