They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade, which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone, or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat, and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age, one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management, to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has passed. Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together with the black masses in which they were embedded. Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added solemnity to the announcement,—