Both heirs to some six feet of sod, Well worth a life to hold in fee. Made tranquil; quieted. Literally, the space between two stakes or palisades ; now it means time or distance between any two things. Subterranean, Lat., sub, under, terra, the Under the earth or ground. Bitumen, Cyclopædia, Ignite, earth. Lat., bitumen. A name applied to various inflammable mineral substances. Gr., kuklos, a circle, and Literally, a circle of learning; paideia, learning. Lat., ignis, fire. a work containing information on many departments of knowledge. To take fire, to burn. Harry and Lucy were travelling with their father and mother in a country district in England. Dark *Maria Edgeworth was born in Berkshire, in 1766. She was the daughter of Richard Lovel Edgeworth, Esq., of Edgeworthtown, in Ireland. She wrote many books for children, tales, novels, &c. She died in Edgeworthtown, in 1849. ness came on before they got to the end of their journey. Harry was looking out of the window of the carriage, when he suddenly exclaimed, "Father! father! Look! look! A fire! a fire! a terrible fire it must be ! The whole sky yonder is red with it.” "Terrible!" said Lucy, looking out. "It must be a town on fire." "Father!" repeated Harry, much astonished by his father's silence and composure; "do you not see it?" "I do," said his father; "but it is not a town on fire. You will see what it is presently." They drove on, Harry looking out of one window, and Lucy out of the other, when she suddenly exclaimed in her turn, 66 Harry, what do you see?" "I see fires! flames! great sparks flying up against the sky. Now I see, I do see, mamma, a house burning-there, there, mamma, at a distance, flames coming out at the top!" "On my side, I see flames coming out of the ground," said Harry. Lucy rushed over to her brother's side of the carriage, bidding him look out at her house burning. "Fires indeed! the whole country is on fire," said Lucy. "I suppose they are burning the grass, or a wood," said Harry, endeavouring to regain his wonted composure, and to make sense of it; "but certainly there is a house on fire, father! Flames red as blood burstfrom the top!" "And we are coming nearer and nearer every instant," cried Lucy; "the road, I see, is going through the middle of these fires. Oh, father! mother! will you call to the man, he must be going wrong? "He is going quite right, my dear," said her mother; "keep yourself quiet, there is no danger, as you may see, by our not being alarmed for you or for ourselves." These words, calmly pronounced, tranquillized Lucy, and Harry determined to wait the event, and not utter another word, whatever he might see. They were driving now along a raised road, with fires on each side of them; flames seemed to burst from the ground at intervals of a few yards. Their deep red colour and pointed shape appeared against the dark night, far and wide as the eye could reach. The fires near the road made it as light as day. "Never elsewhere," said Harry, "did you see such a real sight as this-all those bonfires for miles round; burning how, or for what, I cannot imagine." "It is very wonderful. What can the fires be for?" said Lucy. "Signal fires?" "No," said Harry; flat ground." "there are too many, and on "Signal fires are always on hills; are not they, father? I see these fires near us are from little heaps or hillocks of earth; " but whether they were artificial or natural, made by men's hands, or thrown up by subterranean fires, Harry could not divine. He wished to find out; he desired not to be told; and yet he almost despaired of discovering. 66 Father, I have read in some book of travels of fires that burst out of the ground of themselves. And I have heard of some lake of pitch, or what else do you call it?" "The very word I wanted. Father, are those fires of that sort, from bitumen; or do they burst out of the ground of themselves? ” "Not exactly either," said his father; "but these are both good guesses." "The fiery tower again, brother!" cried Lucy. They came near enough to it now, to see its dark form, and even to hear the roaring of the fire. The body of flame undiminished, undiminishing, kept spouting up from the top of the black tower, blown to and fro by the wind, nobody near or heeding it. When the road brought them to the other side of the tower, they saw an open red arch underneath, which seemed to be filled with a sloping bed of fire. Harry had often seen a limekiln burning in the night. "It is a "It is a limekiln, I do believe; only of a different shape from what I have seen." 66 "No," said his father; "but that is a sensible guess." "Then it is a foundry! I have it now. I remember the picture in the Cyclopædia. It is a foundry for melting iron or brass. Now I begin to understand it all." "And there are others of the same sort coming in view," said Lucy. "And what is that black shadowy form moving up and down regularly and continually, like the outline of a steam-engine?" "Like the great beam? It is a steam-engine," cried Harry. "I see others. There they are, going on all night long, working, working, working; always doing their duty by themselves." His father told Harry that he was quite right in supposing that these were foundries. As to the fires, he said, most of them were low ridges of coal, which were burning into coke, for the use of the forges. The process was very simple. After the coals were set on fire, a man was employed to cover them with ashes, through which the smoke could escape till they were sufficiently burned. Coke, he told them, gave out a more steady and intense heat after the gas and smoke were driven off. Some of the fires, he added, might perhaps proceed from the refuse small coal, which were known occasionally to ignite spontaneously, and were suffered to burn, as there was no danger of their doing any mischief in this waste land. When this explanation was given, Lucy's interest a little diminished with the mystery; but Harry's increased when he considered the wonderful reality. "I shall like to see this country by daylight," said Harry; "and to learn what those numbers of steamengines are doing." "That must be for to-morrow," said his father. SUMMARY.-Harry and Lucy were travelling with their father and mother in South Staffordshire, which is sometimes called the black country; it is so smoked and blackened by the smoke and dust from ever-burning furnaces. At night the scene is startling to a stranger. The children were surprised to see |