"But what put the miners in your head?" He enquired curiously, when they were at last sober again. "I suppose it must have been with hearing so much about them for some time back, and we were talking about them down in the Hollow this afternoon. I knew you were trying to satisfy them, and I was bothering myself because I could do nothing when things were going wrong." "Well, if all that was on your mind, I hardly wonder at your dreaming of miners," remarked Mr. Kimberly smiling. "And highly complimented the miners may think themselves," put in Archie. "Well, as it turns out," continued Mr. Kimberly, "you needn't have worried yourself quite so much about your inability, seeing you have already accomplished a very great deal--you and your young friends who help you." "How?" exclaimed Minnie, eagerly, "we seem to be able to do nothing just now--the only time we could do any real good--" "Never mind that at the present moment," interrupted Archie, "let us hear papa's story." "Then you must know in the first place that the discontent among the miners is stirred up by a few men who, not content with bringing poverty and hardship upon themselves, seek to draw others into it also, and seem never to be so happy as when raising strife of one kind or another. I know that the most of my men, are perfectly well aware that they receive good wages for their work, and would be content enough if it were not for these vampires--for they seem liker that than anything else. Though I have been at many of their meetings I have never had an opportunity of speaking until to-day, and you may be sure I made the most of it, laying before them a plain statement of the case, and asking them if, in their hearts, they did not endorse every word of it. "I may as well say that I had very little faith in anything resulting from this appeal, and was therefore not surprised when I sat down, to see that the stolid indifference with which they had received me was still unbroken; but I _was_ surprised at what followed. "A great burly Irishman--one Malone--who has been working in the pit for half-a-year or so, stood up and spoke. "He did not say much, but every word told. He retailed the story of his wife's death-bed, and how the master's daughter had come, undeterred by wind and rain, and brought with her the comfort and hope which had made his wife's last moments the happiest she had ever known. I cannot bring before you the grandeur of simplicity which carried such weight with it, nor the terrible sincerity of the rugged giant, as he stood with tears in his eyes and his voice husky with emotion, but it is a scene I will never forget as long as I live, and I don't think any one who witnessed it will ever forget it either.