Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/268

17, 1860.]  client—if you can prevent it. Never in the course of my professional experience did I leave a cause so confidently in the hands of a British Jury as this one.”

So saying, Mr. Battledove sat down, but in a moment rose again, and said:

“Call Mrs. Barber.”

With a few confidential words to Dr. Dodge, the learned gentleman then hurried out of Court.

, as mutineers, from the mouth of avenging guns—a fit reward for treason, murder, and worse—but in the midst of their daily work, without an instant of preparation, without a chance of escape, and without a thought of danger, in the midst of their country and ours—two hundred yards below the surface of the earth—in a coal-mine!

It is a fine afternoon in February, our men are all at their work, and everything is as dry, dusty, and parched as in a colliery district everything always is. I have taken my afternoon round through the acres of six-inch dust and cast-iron pipes, the clouds of smoke, and the clattering hammers and machinery which constitute the “works” at which I am employed; and I am looking forward to the six o’clock bell—yet three hours’ distant—which, unless a boiler bursts, or a smash takes place somewhere, will free me for the day; when a rumour, dark, horrible, and indistinct, spreads among the men that an explosion has just taken place at one of the great collieries of the neighbourhood, which we may call the Bungle Colliery, without being very wide of the mark in any sense. Where this rumour originates no one knows; how it spreads, or how much truth it may contain, is alike uncertain; only one thing seems pretty clear, which is, that something has happened even worse than the daily accidents of colliery life; and that “something” is said to be the sudden annihilation of two hundred human beings, whom the pitiless and unconquerable firedamp has blown to pieces.

The hammering and the din of work ceases in our yard, as little knots of workmen collect to compare information; and when the rumour has gathered substance, and passed from mouth to mouth amongst them, jackets are donned, hundreds of people are soon on their way across the fields to the Bungle Colliery, near Burnslay. And I find I may anticipate six o’clock, and go home, for there is not one man left in the place to work or to be looked after. So I go.

Not much miscellaneous conversation that evening! No asking, as is usually the case, what is the news from London, or what the world