The naked miner in the first chamber, now crept out to the entrance, having fastened a rope round the remotest logs that supported the roof of the den he had hewed. These he hauled out. He then knocked away the nearest ones with a great mallet. Taking a pole with a broad blade of iron at the end, edged on one side and hooked at the other, something like a halbert, he next cut and pulled away, one by one, by repeated blows and tugs, each of the pillars of coal which he had left within. A strange cracking overhead was presently heard. All stepped back and waited. The cracking ceased, and the miner again advanced, accompanied by Flashley’s guide; while, by some detestable necromancy, our young visitor—alack! so very lately such a dashing young fellow ‘about town,’ now suddenly fallen into the dreadful condition of receiving all sorts of knowledge about coals—felt compelled to assist in the operation. Advancing with great wedges, while Flashley carried two large sledge hammers to be ready for use, the miners inserted their wedges into cracks in the upper part of the wall of coal above the long chamber that had just been excavated, the roof of which was now bereft of all internal support. They then took the hammers and began to drive in the wedges. The cracks widened, and shot about in branches, like some black process of crystallisation. The party retreated several paces—one wide flaw opened above, and down came a hundred tons of coal in huge blocks and broad splinters! The concussion of the air, and the flight of coal-dust, extinguished the candles. At this the two miners laughed loudly, and, pushing Flashley before them, caused him to crouch down on his hands and knees, and again creep along the low passage by which they had entered. A boy in harness drawing a little empty waggon soon approached, with a candle on his forehead, as usual. The meeting being unexpected and out of order, as the parties could not pass each other in this place, Flashley’s special guide and ‘tutor’ gave him a lift and a push, by means of which he was squeezed between the rough roofing and the upper rail of the empty waggon, into which he then sank down with a loud ‘Oh!’ His tutor now set his head to the hinder part of the waggon, the miner assumed the same position with respect to the tutor—the boy did the same by the miner—and thus, by reversing the action of the wheels, the little waggon, with its alarmed occupant, was driven along by this three-horse power through the low passage, with a reckless speed and jocularity, in which the ridiculous and hideous were inextricably mingled.