He has large, shrewd,
humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as
he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him.
It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple
disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could
pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in
his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man
who studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness of
jaw and grim tightness about the lips which would warn him that
there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant, brown-haired
young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good or evil
upon any society to which he was introduced.
Having made one or two tentative remarks to the nearest miner,
and receiving only short, gruff replies, the traveller resigned
himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily out of the window
at the fading landscape.
It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom there
pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills.
Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each side,
with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them.
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