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Down in the midst of them fell a portion of the rocky roof enough to have filled a wheelbarrow, and enough certainly to have put out the vital spark of any man on whom it might have fallen. One coal-grimed man, at whose feet the mass had fallen, looked up placidly and said, 'That stuck up till it couldn't stick no longer; and that was all that was said about the matter.
As I sat upon the window-ledge listening to the voice with its flowing song, my thoughts were far away, and I was looking down once more upon the eager, coal-grimed faces in the rude little church in Black Rock. I was brought back to find myself swallowing hard by an audible whisper from a wee lassie to her mother 'Mither! See till yon man. He's greetin'.
Only a few of the people in the rear of the crowd noticed the priest's presence at all. He was glad enough of that, for suspicion was in the air and he knew it. Right in his way was Calvalho, who had been one of his trustees and his very best friend when he first came to the parish. It looked now as if he had no longer a friend in all the mud-spattered, bare and coal-grimed town.
I could no longer contain my joy when my father, in the intervals of tapping the barometer and complaining of the cold, began to look out which were the best trains, and when I understood that by making one's way, after luncheon, into the coal-grimed laboratory, the wizard's cell that undertook to contrive a complete transmutation of its surroundings, one could awaken, next morning, in the city of marble and gold, in which "the building of the wall was of jasper and the foundation of the wall an emerald."
Dave shovelled his load without remark, but as he stood for a moment at the finish wiping the sweat from his coal-grimed face Mr. Duncan engaged him in conversation. "You handle a team like you were born to it," he said. "Where did you get the knack?" "Well, I came up on a ranch," said Dave. "I've lived with horses ever since I could remember." "You're a rancher, eh?" queried the older man.
Big, coal-grimed miners laughed till the tears made streaks on their faces; they fell on one another's necks for delight at this trick which had been played upon their oppressors. Even Jeff Cotton could not withhold his tribute. "By God, you're the limit!" he muttered.
There, on the other side, moved sluggishly along under her old, patched, and coal-grimed canvas a collier brig, with bluff bows, long bowsprit, and short stumpy masts and yards, the counterpart of the Betsy Jane of glorious memory.
Miss Sally regarded her with a smile of conscious strength, stern but good-natured. Her gaze wandered past the woman's shoulder, and the smile broadened. Mrs. Huggins saw it broaden, and cast a look behind her, towards the house to see Mr. Bossom, coal-grimed but cheerful, grinning down on her from the front door-step. "It's a trap!" she gasped, shooting a venomous look at Mr. Hucks.
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