Little white tents, for the strange workmen to sleep in, dotted the green, and two snowy refreshment tents were pitched outside the Dun Cow.

That establishment had large brick ovens and boilers, and the landlady, and the women she had got to help her, kept the tables always groaning under solid fare that never once flagged, being under the charge of that old campaigner, Colonel Clifford.

The landlady tried to look sad at the occasion which called forth her energy and talents; but she was a woman of business, and her complacency oozed through her.

Ah, it was not so at the pit mouth; the poor wives whose husbands were entombed below, alive or dead, hovered and fluttered about the two shafts with their aprons to their eyes, and eager with their questions.

Deadly were their fears, their hopes fainter and fainter, as day after day went by, and both gangs, working in so narrow a space, made little progress, compared with their own desires, and the prayers of those who trembled for the result.