urable distance of his nobler foe.' Italian bird-catchers, it is said, tether a brown owl to the ground in an open space surrounded by bushes, and the small birds that troop to mob him find themselves caught by the bird-lime with which the bushes have been plentifully smeared.

But a worse and still more unworthy fate even than this used to befall the brown owl among our own forefathers. The belief, still prevalent in country districts, that an owl perching on the windows of a house or hooting near it, presages the death of an inmate, marked him out for special persecution at the time of family gatherings, and the so-called "duck hunt" was a common accompaniment of Christmastide. It was on this wise. An owl was lashed to the back of a duck, and duck and rider were launched upon a pond. The brown owl is not altogether a stranger to water, for, unlikely as it seems, he has been frequently seen, as the Java fishing owl habitually does, to pounce upon a fish and carry it to his young. But he is well frightened now. He digs his talons deep into the duck, as Europa clung the faster to the neck of the bull which carried her over the sea when he plunged on purpose more deeply into it, to strengthen his hold. The terrified duck dives. The more she dives, the more he grips; the more he grips, the more she dives. A tame owl which has dipped itself in water, as he loves to do, is a lamentable sight enough. His fluffy feathers have lost all their fluffiness, and are glued to his side. His body, to all appearance, has shrunk to half its usual size. The water drips from his venerable countenance, his eyes stand out doubly, and his whole head seems little else but a pair of eyes and beak. He shivers from head to foot. But a voluntary ducking in a basin is one thing, an in

"My Feathered Friends," J. G. Wood, pp. 144, 145.

voluntary and reiterated ducking in æ duck pond by a duck which is tied fast to him is quite another. Each time the duck rises to the surface, the owl looks more pitiable, and is welcomed only by the pitiless laughter of the onlookers, till death by drowning puts an end to his sufferings.

A story related by H. L. Meyer, the well-known ornithologist, blends so closely the comic and the tragic elements, which are, as I have shown, sơ intermixed in the history of the owl, that I cannot help giving the drift of it here. The wife of his father's gardener had been for some time ill; and his father, one Sunday morning, passing by the cottage, noticed that the gardener and his two sons were dressed in black and to all appearance plunged in the deepest melancholy. He offered his condolences, but the husband hastened to explain that it was not the death of his wife; it was only the announcement of it, that he was deploring. A brown owl had flown, some nights before, over his cottage, and had hooted repeatedly in the back-yard. The garments of the family had long been shabby, and now that the death of the wife was imminent, he had thought that suits of mourning, if made at once, would serve for the next Sunday services, as well as for the more sombre service that was so soon to follow. Die the mother did very soon afterwards, and what between the "boding owl" and the mourning garments which were already worn for her, she must have died, one would think, many times before her death. Meyer does not say so, but I cannot help thinking that the gardener must have been a Scotchman. The dour, the grim humor of the scene, the making the best of both worlds, the delicious economy, domestic and religiousabove all, the "Sabbath blacks”—all mark the story as coming from the north of the Tweed. Is it not some

thing of a piece with the Scotchman who, when he had been condemned to death on the clearest evidence for the murder of his wife, and who when his Counsel, liking his looks, came to visit him in his condemned cell, and telling him that there was no hope of a reprieve, nor did he deserve it, asked him whether he could do anything further for him, replied: "Could you get me my Sabbath blacks to wear on the occasion?" "Yes," replied the Counsel; "but why on earth do you want them?" "It's just"-such was the rejoinder"as a mark of respect for the departed."

Let me, before I conclude, lodge one more protest and make one more appeal against the pole-trap, which, though less common than it was, is still to be seen, a hideous appendage, in too many green rides in the game preserve and on too many picturesque knolls amidst the heather. Anyone who has seen, as I have done, a bird which is so interesting from every point of view, which lends such a charm by its flight and note to the evening hours, which is so charged with natural affection for its young and its belongings, hanging from a pole-trap with pleading, reproachful eyes, and perishing in prolonged agony when, as so often happens, the keeper has not cared to go his rounds, must feel his indignation and his compassion deeply stirred within him. If he does not take the law into his own hands in obedience to a higher law-as, I confess, I have often done-and, wilfully guilty of a petty larceny, fling the instrument of torture into a place where it will not be found again, he will at least feel that there is room for a new

The Nineteenth Century and After.

branch of the "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Society," and be anxious to join an "Anti-Pole-trap League"-a league against a practice which involves the horrors of the operatingroom of the vivisectionist without any of the vivisectionist's excuse.

But, appeals to humanity apart, let me also once more point out to all connected with the land that self-interest, if no higher motive, demands the instant abolition of the pole-trap. Large portions of England, my own neighborhood amongst them, are at this moment being devastated by rats. No grain, no fruit is safe from them. The owl is their natural enemy, the check kindly placed by Nature-may we not say by God?-on their ravages. No owl can harbor within a mile or two of a pole-trap and live. Let it be anathema. The number of owls in the country has been terribly diminished. Let them be encouraged and protected in every way possible. Let the gamekeeper be rewarded as I have rewarded him myself, with some success, not for the owls that he destroys, but for the owls that he preserves. From the nature of the case, their number can never be very large. Let the owl be regarded and protected in England as the stork is regarded and protected in Holland and other countries on the Continent. All parishes have once had

many parishes have still, and all may have again, if people will only be wise in time-one or more "owl trees," or owl barns, or owl belfries, which should be regarded, in the truest sense of the word, as "owl sanctuaries," where these fascinating and venerable benefactors of humanity may live inviolate from generation to generation. R. Bosworth Smith.

The Lady Hester Gold Mine was going at its full strength, and with its full complement of hands. Ten head of stamps were vamping an accompaniment to almost any tune that you cared to put to them, and their echoes had the surrounding ranges all to themselves to play about in, for the Lady Hester was miles away from any -other workings, save those of a few lonely prospectors, a transient population, who came and went in fitful endeavors to find something good in the neighborhood of the staunch and sterling little mine that had paid its way, and a good deal over, for some years. Three small poppet-heads that looked like strayed children of some of the immense structures you may see in a large mining centre marked the mouths of the shafts, while underground there was a very network of tunnels, drives, winzes, and stopes, all of which technical terms do not matter; they stand for lateral, diagonal, and other burrowings. What does matter, is, that two of these shafts were worked with "whips," the third with a "whim." In both of these the motive power is the usual intermediary between man-handling and steam, namely horse.

The whip-horse harnessed on to the end of a wire rope hauls up his bucket by walking straight out from the shaft, along a track that is the exact length of the depth from which he is hauling, and a trifle over. At the end of the trifle the topman, or landing brakesman, seizes the bucket by the edge, or handle, the horse backs, and the man swings the bucket, as it lowers, towards him, and lands it on the plat, or landing stage. The whim is quite -different. A small place is cleared close to the shaft, half the size of a circus-ring. In the centre of this, upon

a pivot, is a round wooden drum standing perpendicularly. Horizontally on the drum is a thing that, when not in motion, looks like a large water-wheel that has laid itself down to rest, under the outside edge of which, and connected with it by a hanging iron bow that fastens on to his saddle, is the horse, who by continually marching in the same circle winds the rope round and round the wooden drum. When the bucket comes above the shaft the horse does not back, as in the case of the whip, but turns completely round, and takes a step or two in the opposite direction. In both cases if the shaft be an open one, that is to say does not have doors that close below it as the bucket rises above the mouth, the lives of the men below depend upon the topman, who must never bungle. His work is simple, it must also be perfect. The shafts at the Lady Hester were all open ones.

The boy that drove the whim horse was in a bad temper, and no wonder; for the thermometer stood at about 100° while the night before there had been a severe frost, and though he had blankets they were so thin and worn as to be almost useless.

"Below there!"

Not a shout, but a terrified scream. A quarter of a ton of stone in not much more than half a dozen lumps was hurtling down the shaft in an ever hurrying rush, bumping from side to side with dull crashes against the timber. The topman of the whim-shaft had thrown himself flat on his stomach. His head was hanging over the mouth of the shaft. Something seemed to be tearing at his throat, but he fought it down, and screamed once more before the concussions between stone and timber had ceased. Then

came silence, save for the jerky rhythm of the stamps down by the dam that seemed to the man to be hammering out his last words in contemptuous mockery. "Below there-below-below -below there," sang the stamps.

"Are you all right?"

He had to say this over many times in his head before the knowledge came to him that now no sound was coming from his lips, for his heart had come up into his throat and blocked everything.

"Are you all right-are you all right -all right-all right-all right!" sang the stamps, and then, not being fed properly, they ran away and whirred a wild iron laugh at him. Speechless, and with the total paralysis of fear, he lay with his head hanging over into the blackness.

Half an hour before he had hailed the two men below, and had been going to tell them that he felt clumsy at landing, that it was the first time he had ever landed from a whim, that the whim-horse was not turning as he should, and that if they liked he would go away and tell the manager to put somebody else in his place. But when they had answered his hail he had only asked them to send up a water-bag as his own was empty, and the sun, so he expressed it, was fairly jumping on him. It had suddenly occurred to him that he would only make the boy who led the horse round and round the monotonous little circle either angry or nervous. He could not bear the thought of being jeered at or laughed at by the boy, and it would be still worse to make him frightened.

From down below too they would probably only laugh at him, in a different way, and tell him to "buck up," with a few good-natured curses thrown in to emphasize the encouragement. And so he had gone on. Twice he had exasperated the boy by calling out the word of command "Turn," and then

adding "No don't, a little higher, please," for he was always polite"now turn," and each of these times the heavy iron bucket had clanked against the edge, and he had barely saved it from spilling down the shaft. After this the thing had simply grown, and grown into a hideous sunlit nightmare. The strenuous toil of rolling and shifting the great weight to the edge of the "plat," and there tipping it over, somewhat relieved him each time it had to be done, but, as the one bucket went down, and he could hear, far below him, the end of the filling of the other, his legs began to feel cold, and he would have given the world and all things in it to turn and run, run far out into the quiet sea of ranges that stood in its ever stationary waves around this clamoring island of work. But he had stuck to it: that was his strong point-he had thought he would be able, but he knew now that he was not fit for the work-never had beenthere was only another hour to do, then he would go to the manager, and tell him-ask him to give him something underground--he had been underground before, never more than fifty feet or so, but there could not be much difference in going deeper.

Meanwhile the crash came. Mingled hot and cold sweat had made a tepid rain in his eyes that blinded him at the crucial moment. He missed the handle of the bucket, and utterly confused the boy with a dozen different orders, all incoherent. The bucket dropped upon the edge of the shaft and tipped into it-and there he lay waiting. Below were two men; had he killed both of them, or only one? The blood of these men, their life bloodand he knew them both well, and liked them had been hovering over him, between him and the blue sky, for hours -it was his doom to take it-why, one of those lumps would smash both their heads, if they happened to be close

together, to just a mere bony pulp. What should he have done? Should he have run away? His upbringing, a public school, some little soldiering, and a constant, fanatical desire to accomplish the task set him had kept him there-it was his creed, all that he had of a creed, and it was apparently all wrong; it was kicked over just as some burly ruffian might stamp upon a piece of old Dresden China, and then challenge the owner to prove that the bauble had been of any use. Tangled up in this rope of Duty he had hung himself to himself-for all time.

He might have been lying there for seconds, or he might have been lying there for years, when a voice came up the shaft: "What the devil are you playing at? Bill and me was lighting our pipes in the tunnel, or we might 'ave run against one of them pebbles!"

The topman's head drooped and his limbs slackened. He had forgotten the tunnel and its chances. The order against smoking in the mine was so strict that few men cared to transgress it, and he knew that they had never been lighting their pipes at all, but had skipped into the tunnel just in time. It was their way of letting him down lightly. "Go ahead, sonny!" came up the voice again. "We'll stand from under when you land." Then somehow he kept going till the whistle blew. As he emptied the last bucket he turned and hurried down to find the manager.

II.

"Can you use hammer and drill?" said the manager.

"I could soon learn."

"Learn! learn! Man! do you take this for a higher education shop, or what? This mine pays dividends, it don't teach. It's the other sort of mine that teaches hammer and drill to some that thought they'd never have to learn

it." He looked at the late topman for appreciation of his tirade on the other sort of mine, but without result, for the younger man was filled with his own forlornness, and was staring moodily over the manager's head at the now idle whim.

"You're hard up," he went on, "I don't want to turn you adrift. Look here! do you think you could guide a bucket out of the water, and keep a candle from going out?"

"Yes, I think I could do that," tentatively.

"Well, just be hanging about No. 2 whip-shaft at eight o'clock in the morning, and I'll take you down; I've a good miner wasting down there on the morning shift now; but we must get that deep shaft baled by horse as soon as possible, as there's a pump and engine on the road up for her; and, by-the-bye, you'll get full wages for this job though there's nothing to do; but it's rather wet and uncomfortable down there, and a bit lonely. Some of the fools won't take it on because there's nobody to talk to for eight hours at a time you don't mind that, I suppose?"

"Oh no!"-with an attempt at cheerfulness. "I don't mind that." He really thought he would like to get away from everybody for a while, and as to going underground, why, it meant going to a place where he could not see the whim-which from everywhere above-ground seemed to drag his eyes to it.

It was what is called an underlay shaft; that is to say it was not vertical, but sloped at an angle of about 60°. It was about 160 feet deep, and the bucket ascended and descended on two wooden runners, or rails. Half way down there was a "level," or tunnel running both ways at right angles, in the floor of which there was a trapdoor that shut in the bottom part of the shaft when the bucket was not