During long years he zealously performed his duty.

His only grief had been to perceive the bed becoming impoverished, and to see the hour approaching when the seam would be exhausted.
It was then he devoted himself to the search for new veins in all the Aberfoyle pits, which communicated underground one with another.

He had had the good luck to discover several during the last period of the working.

His miner's instinct assisted him marvelously, and the engineer, James Starr, appreciated him highly.

It might be said that he divined the course of seams in the depths of the coal mine as a hydroscope reveals springs in the bowels of the earth.