Up this the little train was slowly crawling.
The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger car, a long, bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were seated.

The greater number of these were workmen returning from their day's toil in the lower part of the valley.

At least a dozen, by their grimed faces and the safety lanterns which they carried, proclaimed themselves miners.

These sat smoking in a group and conversed in low voices, glancing occasionally at two men on the opposite side of the car, whose uniforms and badges showed them to be policemen.
Several women of the labouring class and one or two travellers who might have been small local storekeepers made up the rest of the company, with the exception of one young man in a corner by himself.

It is with this man that we are concerned.