Peasant Tales of Russia

It was still dark, for the autumn days begin late. Heavy grey clouds glided slowly over the sky, in which the first streaks of dawn were hardly visible. These clouds glided so low that they seemed to wish to lie on the earth in order to hide this black hole, this well-like orifice which was about to swallow up the miners one by one. The air was saturated with a cloud of damp dust, particles of which fell on the men's hair and faces. The miners wore leather jerkins, and small lamps, whose light flickered fitfully, hung at their belts. An imaginative person might have thought that they trembled with fear at having to descend into the heavy dense darkness of the mine.