In the house on the hillside the boy and his mother lived together
happily. In the early morning they went down the hill and across the
tracks to the offices of the mine. From the offices the boy went up
the hill on the farther side of the valley and sat upon the
schoolhouse steps or wandered in the streets waiting for the day in
school to begin. In the evening mother and son sat upon the steps at
the front of their home and watched the glare of the coke ovens on the
sky and the lights of the swiftly-running passenger trains, roaring
whistling and disappearing into the night.
Nance McGregor talked to her son of the big world outside the valley
and told him of the cities, the seas and the strange lands and peoples
beyond the seas. "We have dug in the ground like rats," she said, "I
and my people and your father and his people. With you it will be
different. You will get out of here to other places and other work."
She grew indignant thinking of the life in the town. "We are stuck
down here amid dirt, living in it, breathing it," she complained.
"Sixty men died in that hole in the ground and then the mine started
again with new men. We stay here year after year digging coal to burn
in engines that take other people across the seas and into the West.
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