"Have you seen anything of our Sammul?" These words were addressed in a very excited voice to a tall rough-looking collier, who, with Davy-lamp in hand, was dressed ready for the night-shift in the Bank Pit of the Langhurst Colliery. Langhurst was a populous village in the south of Lancashire. The speaker was a woman, the regularity of whose features showed that she had once been good-looking, but from whose face every trace of beauty had been scorched out by intemperance. Her hair uncombed, and prematurely grey, straggled out into the wind. Her dress, all patches, scarcely served for decent covering; while her poor half-naked feet seemed rather galled than protected by the miserable slippers in which she clattered along the pavement, and which just revealed some filthy fragments of stockings.