CHAPTER XI.
SNIGGLING FOR EELS.
Next day Mr.Clifford said he would take all the children, except Miss Flyaway, to see a coal mine.

It was nothing new to Horace, who was in the habit of exploring his native town as critically as a regularly employed surveyor.

You could hardly show him anything which he had not already seen and examined carefully, from a steamboat to a dish of "sour-krout." Grace and Cassy were by no means as learned, and had never ventured under ground.

They feared, yet longed, to make the experiment.
As for Dotty, she knew Jennie Vance's ring had been found in a mine.
She had a vague notion that strange, half-human creatures were at work in the bowels of the earth, hunting for similar bits of jewelry.

She had a secret hope that, if she went down there, she might herself see something shining in a dark corner; and what if it should be a piece of yellow gold, just suitable to be made into a ring to contain the oyster pearl! How surprised Jennie Vance would be to see such a precious treasure on her little friend's finger! "She didn't find her ring herself, and it isn't a pearl.