Patience Wins | Page 4

could hardly believe that we were really
on our way.
Of course I felt a little low-spirited at leaving home, and I was a little
angry with myself for seeming to be so glad to get away from those
who had been so patient and kind, but I soon found myself arguing that
it would have been just the same if I had left home only to go to some
business place in London. Still I was looking very gloomy when Uncle
Jack clapped me on the shoulder, and asked me if I didn't feel like
beginning to be a man.
"No," I said sadly, as I looked out of the window at the flying
landscape, so that he should not see my face. "I feel more as if I was
beginning to be a great girl."
"Nonsense!" said Uncle Bob; "you're going to be a man now, and help
us."

"Am I?" said I sadly.
"To be sure you are. There, put that gloomy face in your pocket and
learn geography."
They both chatted to me, and I felt a little better, but anything but
cheerful, for it was my first time of leaving home. I looked at the
landscape, and the towns and churches we passed, but nothing seemed
to interest me till, well on in my journey, I saw a sort of wooden tower
close to the line, with a wheel standing half out of the top. There was
an engine-house close by--there was no doubt about it, for I could see
the puffs of white steam at the top, and a chimney. There was a great
mound of black slate and rubbish by the end; but even though the
railway had a siding close up to it, and a number of trucks were
standing waiting, I did not realise what the place was till Uncle Jack
said:
"First time you've seen a coal-pit, eh?"
"Is that a coal-pit?" I said, looking at the place more eagerly.
"Those are the works. Of course you can't see the shaft, because that's
only like a big square well."
"But I thought it would be a much more interesting place," I said.
"Interesting enough down below; but of course there is nothing to see at
the top but the engine, cage, and mouth of the shaft."
That brightened me up at once. There was something to think about in
connection with a coal-mine--the great deep shaft, the cage going up
and down, the miners with their safety-lamps and picks. I saw it all in
imagination as we dashed by another and another mine. Then I began to
think about the accidents of which I had read; when men unfastened
their wire-gauze lamps, so that they might do that which was forbidden
in a mine, smoke their pipes. The match struck or the opened lamp set
fire to the gas, when there was an awful explosion, and after that the
terrible dangers of the after-damp, that fearful foul air which no man

could breathe for long and live.
There were hundreds of thoughts like this to take my attention as we
raced on by the fast train till, to my surprise, I found that it was getting
dark, and the day had passed.
"Here we are close to it," said Uncle Jack; "look, my lad."
I gazed out of the window on our right as the train glided on, to see the
glare as of a city on fire: the glow of a dull red flickered and danced
upon the dense clouds that overhung the place. Tall chimneys stood up
like black stakes or posts set up in the reflection of open furnace doors.
Here a keen bright light went straight up through the smoke with the
edges exactly defined--here it was a sharp glare, there a dull red glow,
and everywhere there seemed to be fire and reflection, and red or
golden smoke mingled with a dull throbbing booming sound, which,
faintly heard at first, grew louder and louder as the train slackened
speed, and the pant and pulsation of the engine ceased.
"Isn't something dreadful the matter?" I said, as I gazed excitedly from
the window.
"Matter!" said Uncle Jack laughing.
"Yes, isn't the place on fire? Look! Look! There there!"
I pointed to a fierce glare that seemed to reach up into the sky, cutting
the dense cloud like millions of golden arrows shot from some mighty
engine all at once.
"Yes, I see, old fellow," said Uncle Jack. "They have just tapped a
furnace, and the molten metal is running into the moulds, that's all."
"But the whole town looks as if it were in a blaze," I said nervously.
"So did our works sometimes, didn't they? Well, here we are in a town
where there are hundreds upon