your fellows. You have played the scoundrel instead, and I have done with you. I shall report you. That's the end of it."
He went on his way, and left the man uttering curses under his breath. If there had not been workers near at hand, Derrick might not have gotten away so easily. Among the men in the next gallery there were some who were no friends to Lowrie, and who would have given him rough handling if they had caught him just at that moment, and the fellow knew it.
Toward the end of the week, the owners came, and Derrick made his report. The result was just what he had known it would be. Explosions had been caused before by transgressions of the rules, and explosions were expensive and disastrous affairs. Lowrie received his discharge, and his fellow-workmen a severe warning, to the secret consternation of some among them.
That the engineer of the new mines was a zealous and really amiable young man, if rather prone to innovations, became evident to his employers. But his innovations were not encouraged. So, notwithstanding his arguments, the blast-furnaces held their own, and "for the present," as the easy-natured manager put it, other matters, even more important, were set aside.
"There is much to be done, Derrick," he said; "really so much that requires time and money, that we must wait a little. 'Rome, etc.'"
"Ah, Rome!" returned Derrick. "I am sometimes of the opinion that Rome had better never been built at all. You will not discharge your imperfect apparatus for the same reason that you will, discharge a collier,—which is hardly fair to the collier. Your blast-furnaces expose the miners to as great danger as Lowrie's pipe. The
