age--the nose and chin drawn together, the cheeks still ruddy from a life of health, puckered up with wrinkles, and the very skull apparently diminished in size from the efforts of time. On he went, with his feeble limbs and stooping shoulders, the "Davy" suspended from his bony old fingers, and a complaint in every footstep, with his shadow all bent and crumpled up, an extraordinary spectrum moving before him along the sunny road. Horace, who gave him the usual rural salutation of "A fine morning," received only a half-articulate groan in reply. The old pitman was not thinking of the fine morning, the sweet air, or the sunshine; but only of his own troubles and weaknesses, and himself. "To them as has the strength it's fine and fine enow," he mumbled at last; "but an ould man as should be in his commforable bed--eugh-eugh! Needcessity's sore upon the ould and frail." "How is it that you have to get to work so early?--you're not a new hand," said Horace, with the rough and plain-spoken curiosity which often does instead of sympathy. "A new hand!" groaned his querulous interlocutor; "an I was as I hev been, my young spark, I'd gie you a lesson would larn you better than to speak light to an ould man. I've bin about the pit, dash her, since ever the first day she was begoud, and mought have broke my neck like the rest if it hadn't a bin for good loock, and God A'mighty--eyeh, eyeh! I was about the very ground, I was, when the first word was giv there was coal there; but I'll never believe there was ought let on o' that to the ould Squire." "Eh!--the pits here are not old pits then, aren't they?" said Horace; "who was it found the coal? I daresay the landlord made it worth his while." "The Lord make me quat of a parcel o' vain lads, that ken no more nor as many coodies!" cried the old man; "haven't I as good as told you my belief?--and will ye pretend ye ken better than me, that was born on his very land?" "That's a bad cough of yours," said Horace, who had good practice in the means of extending information; "what do you say to a dram this sharp morning, to warm you before you go underground?"