hanging down, so that, seeing them coming out of the shaft in the
gloaming, one thought of a file of baboons. The method of getting out
the coal was to "undercut" it with a pick, and then blow it loose with a
charge of powder. This meant that the miner had to lie on his side while
working, and accounted for other physical peculiarities.

Thus, as always, when one understood the lives of men, one came to pity
instead of despising. Here was a separate race of creatures,
subterranean, gnomes, pent up by society for purposes of its own.
Outside in the sunshine-flooded canyon, long lines of cars rolled down
with their freight of soft-coal; coal which would go to the ends of the
earth, to places the miner never heard of, turning the wheels of
industry whose products the miner would never see. It would make
precious silks for fine ladies, it would cut precious jewels for their
adornment; it would carry long trains of softly upholstered cars across
deserts and over mountains; it would drive palatial steamships out of
wintry tempests into gleaming tropic seas. And the fine ladies in their
precious silks and jewels would eat and sleep and laugh and lie at
ease--and would know no more of the stunted creatures of the dark than
the stunted creatures knew of them. Hal reflected upon this, and subdued
his Anglo-Saxon pride, finding forgiveness for what was repulsive in
these people--their barbarous, jabbering speech, their vermin-ridden
homes, their bare-bottomed babies.



SECTION 7.

It chanced before many days that Hal got a holiday, relieving the
monotony of his labours as stableman: an accidental holiday, not