"I feel rather tired with my walk to-day," observed Mr Vernon Wycherley, who, having at last eaten to his heart's content, had pressed an extra chair into his service, for the purpose of resting his long and wearied legs thereupon. "Every thing here," he continued, glancing his eye around the tidily furnished little room--"every thing here looks clean and comfortable. I wonder if we could get accommodated with beds, instead of having to tramp it three miles further over the sandbanks in this uncertain weather, in order to reach our original destination at the next village?" "I wish we could, with all my heart," answered Frank; "and here comes Mary with some more stout, who can tell us all about it." And so the handmaiden was questioned accordingly, who replied, in a tone of evident disappointment, "Lar bless ee, sir, there b'aint a bed to be had in the whole place; fay there b'aint, I can assure ee not, if ye'd offer pounds o' gold for 'un; for ever since Wheal Costly, just handy by here, has turned out so rich, there's no quarters to be had for the sight of folks that be employed about her. There's only seven beds in all this here housen; and, besides the family, there be no less than sex-and-thirty miners a quartering here; they takes sex out o' the seven beds, and mistus and I and all the childer do fill the t'othern all night, and when us do turn out, then maister and his comarade do turn in--and 'tis the same all through town[38]--an' by ma fath an' troth, I zem there b'aint, at this very moment, a bed without a pair in 'un for miles round." "But how do the folks here contrive to pig it away together six in a bed?" inquired Mr Vernon Wycherley. "Your beds must be very large, otherwise I should fancy such close stowage to be hardly possible." "O na, sir, you don't onderstand," replied the maid, hardly able to restrain herself from laughing outright at the stranger's gross ignorance of mining habits; "not pair[39] o' six all to bed together to one time; you da see miners do work to bal[40] eight hours to a spell, and has sexteen to stay 'bove ground; so one and his comarade sleeps their first eight hours 'bove ground, and then turns out for the next pair; and so they goes on, one pair in and t'other pair out, so that between sex on 'um, the bed's never to say quite empty." "And can never, of course, require a warming-pan," remarked Frank. "Lar! tha b'est a queer little chap," thought Mary; but being too polite to say as much, she merely smiled pleasantly at the remark, as she tripped out of the room. "Well, as we must toddle further, it's of little use to put so grave a face upon it, old fellow," observed Frank to his poetical friend, who was indulging in a reverie, with his eyes fixed in vacancy towards the burning embers in the grate. "Eh! what?" demanded Vernon, with the usual start of an absent literary man, whose attention is suddenly awakened. Frank repeated his previous remark.