“He came here because you had lived here. I guess I know him! I knew that when we started from Gettysburg. And he’s workin’ now to please you. You’re all he’s got. You can bet he wouldn’t take what he’s takin’--the work and the boardin’ house diet--for nothin’. You got him goin’, Jean; he wants you to see that he’s got good stuff in him. He’s fightin’ off his thirst every day; that’s why he walks so much at night. I don’t have to watch him any more--he’s got a grip on himself. He comes into the boardin’ house after everybody’s gone to bed and tumbles down in his bunk so dead tired he don’t hear nothin’ till the old woman beats the tin pan. You ought to be proud, Jean, that a man like him’s doin’ this for you.” “Mr. Craighill’s a good man; he doesn’t need any help from me.” “He’s the real gold,” added Joe, “and I want you to be good to him. I want you to marry him, Jean.” “Oh, Joe! Joe!” she cried despairingly, “don’t speak of such a thing! You don’t know how foolish you are to talk so!” “I’m sorry, Jean,” he answered humbly. “I want you to be happy--and him.” He bade her good-bye, and moved away dejectedly through the night. Jean went to the house of the friends with whom she had been staying, and the next morning left for New York. * * * * * Joe was at work in a dark cavern of the Florence colliery at the hour of her departure. With his butty and their two labourers he had gone to a far corner of the mine. There is no night of the outer world like that of the pit beneath, and no atmosphere like that of the moist air of a coal mine. The very silences have their own profundity, as though heightened by the weight of darkness. Sounds of blasting, the rumbling of mine cars in the gangways, the click of tools along the coal measures--these and kindred sounds have an eerie and phantasmal quality in the great dark. Voices are choked and muffled when men speak, and speech in the coal world is limited to essential directions and conferences; laughter is rarely heard. Indeed, a particular gravity marks the coal miner, and he does not always lose it when he emerges into sunlight. The hazard of his trade and the gloom in which he labours under the crust of the spinning globe numb any joy he might take in his own skill.