His speech was somewhat sullen and hesitating, and what he said was interrupted by whiffs of smoke and sips of liquor; but the nature of the subject was so absorbing that it needed no gifts of eloquence.  It interested Richard in spite of himself; and Solomon was not indifferent to the flattery which the young artist’s attention conveyed, and scarcely needed the entreaties of Trevethick to persuade him to throw off his native reticence.  What he forgot, and had mentioned in former narrations, the landlord supplemented; and when “Sol” became technical and obscure the other performed the part of chorus or explainer.  If the former had been some gifted animal, and the latter its proprietor, he could not have taken a greater pride in the exhibition of its talent than did the landlord in these narrations.  Now he would look at Richard, and nod and wink, as though to bespeak his special attention to what was coming; and now he would wave his pipe, like a dumb orchestra playing slow music, to express the tremendous nature of a situation.  Perhaps he was genuinely impressed by these thrice-told tales—­perhaps he was endeavoring, by a feigned admiration for Sol’s experiences and exploits, to justify his choice of a son-in-law not altogether suited to his Harry.  To do the raconteur justice, he was by no means so egotistic as his aider and abettor, and Trevethick would express his regrets to Richard that it was so hard to get Sol to dismiss generalities and talk about himself.  “It’s on account of Harry being here, you see,” explained he behind his horny hand, but in a tone perfectly audible to the other tenants of the bar parlor; “or else he would tell you how the timbering of the pit once fell upon him, so as nothing was free but his head and his left hand; and yet he never lost his wits in all his agony, but told the men where to saw and what to do; but he don’t like to boast before the ‘gal.’”

Then Richard, taking the hint, inquired of Solomon whether any incident particularly striking had ever happened to himself during his underground experience; and Solomon replied, with affected carelessness; “No, not as I know on; nothing particular.”

Then Trevethick broke in with, “What! not when you was shut up in the seam at Dunston?”

“Oh yes, to be sure,” said Sol, as though the recollection of the circumstance had only just occurred to him; “there was that, certainly; but it was when I was quite a boy.  I was not quite seventeen when Dunston Colliery was drowned.  The Gatton poured right in upon it, and they have not got the water out of it in places to this day.  It was always said that the pit was being worked too near the river; but that was little thought about by those as was most concerned, and it never disturbed the head of a lad like me, of course.  It was in the afternoon of the 12th of December, a date as I am not likely to forget, when the thing happened.  Two mates—­one old man and a middle-aged