It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us sweeping out
the giant powder. It seemed never to be far enough away. And,
after all, it was only some rock pounded for assay.
So much for the lower room. We scraped some of the rougher dirt
off the floor, and left it. That was our sitting-room and kitchen,
though there was nothing to sit upon but the table, and no
provision for a fire except a hole in the roof of the room above,
which had once contained the chimney of a stove.
To that upper room we now proceeded. There were the eighteen bunks
in a double tier, nine on either hand, where from eighteen to
thirty-six miners had once snored together all night long, John
Stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. There was the roof, with a hole
in it through which the sun now shot an arrow. There was the
floor, in much the same state as the one below, though, perhaps,
there was more hay, and certainly there was the added ingredient of
broken glass, the man who stole the window-frames having apparently
made a miscarriage with this one. Without a broom, without hay or
bedding, we could but look about us with a beginning of despair.
The one bright arrow of day, in that gaunt and shattered barrack,
made the rest look dirtier and darker, and the sight drove us at
last into the open.
Here, also, the handiwork of man lay ruined: but the plants were
all alive and thriving; the view below was fresh with the colours
of nature; and we had exchanged a dim, human garret for a corner,
even although it were untidy, of the blue hall of heaven.
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