SECTION 11.

Before long Hal had a chance to see this system of espionage at work,
and he began to understand something of the force which kept these
silent and patient armies at their tasks. On a Sunday morning he was
strolling with his mule-driver friend Tim Rafferty, a kindly lad with a
pair of dreamy blue eyes in his coal-smutted face. They came to Tim's
home, and he invited Hal to come in and meet his family. The father was
a bowed and toil-worn man, but with tremendous strength in his solid
frame, the product of many generations of labour in coal-mines. He was
known as "Old Rafferty," despite the fact that he was well under fifty.
He had been a pit-boy at the age of nine, and he showed Hal a faded
leather album with pictures of his ancestors in the "oul' country"--men
with sad, deeply lined faces, sitting very stiff and solemn to have
their presentments made permanent for posterity.

The mother of the family was a gaunt, grey-haired woman, with no teeth,
but with a warm heart. Hal took to her, because her home was clean; he
sat on the family door-step, amid a crowd of little Rafferties with
newly-washed Sunday faces, and fascinated them with tales of adventures
cribbed from Clark Russell and Captain Mayne Reid. As a reward he was
invited to stay for dinner, and had a clean knife and fork, and a clean
plate of steaming hot potatoes, with two slices of salt pork on the
side. It was so wonderful that he forthwith inquired if he might forsake
his company boarding-house and come and board with them.

Mrs. Rafferty opened wide her eyes. "Sure," exclaimed she, "do you think