It was a hard life he led, working, for the most part, in the dark underground, for when money was scarce and wages high he could not be satisfied to superintend.

Scott, indeed, worked like a paid hand, and they had fought a long, and it seemed a losing, battle against forces whose strength science cannot yet properly measure.

The fish-oil lamps sometimes went out in poisonous air while they examined an unsafe working face; props broke under a load they ought to have borne; and now and then the roof came down.

Rock pillars crushed, massive stones fell out where one least expected, and there was always the icy water that the pump could not keep under and the frost could not stop.
Yet there was something that thrilled one in the stubborn fight, and a strange ascetic satisfaction in proving how much flesh and blood could stand.

One felt stronger for bracing one's tired body against fresh fatigue, and watchfulness in the face of constant danger toned up the brain.