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jewelry, patent medicines, and kitchenware) by horse and buggy. Pedlars drew up by the side of the road and slept under their carts.
    With the discovery of coal came black, gray, yellow, and white dust; came turbid water into the Kangaheela; came the town’s first and last rich man, Airlee MacGregor; came more foreigners—the Silesians and West Virginians, Miss Doubkov’s father (an exiled Russian prince, some said), John and Beata Ashley from New York, speaking the “New York dialect.” Many birds, beasts, fishes, and plants retreated from the region. It became customary to say that the soil was “sour.” Above all came poverty and unrest and the threat of violence. Many of the men who worked ten hours a day underground seemed unable to feed and clothe a twelve- or four-teen-headed family, even when, of a Saturday afternoon, their dear offspring laid their week’s wages in the father’s hand. Shoes played an important role. They haunted the dreamer. Even horses had shoes. A father could feed his family on beans, bran, greens, apples, and occasionally fatback; but it was generally understood that worshipers did not go to church unshod. One’s children went turn and turn about. A number of times in the last half of the nineteenth century there had been revolt in the wind. There are few things more dispiriting than half-hearted strikes. They were ill led and ill supported. The windows of the miners’ store were broken, the company offices wrecked. A group of roaming men was dispersed after it had torn up the picket fence surrounding Airlee MacGregor’s house and hurled his croquet balls at his front door. (Through all that din and splintering wood Old MacGregor sat in his front room, his rifle by his side, righteous as Moses.) Holidays were looked forward to with apprehension. In 1897 the Mayor prudently canceled the Fourth of July parade and oration in Memorial Park. The quadrennial election days were particularly dreaded. The miners swarmed down the hills and gave vent to their long frustration and rage. The administration strictly deducted fines from their wages for nonappearance in the shafts the following day. The men drank and shouted through the night and started lurching up the slopes at dawn; their wives collected them from the ditches beside the road. Many children were born the following August, resignedly welcomed. People in Coaltown had locked their doors at night from as long ago as anyone could remember and the better-off had installed various reinforcements and barricades. Breckenridge Lansing was not the first to train his family in the use of firearms, though it was to be expected of him as managing director of the mines. It astonished the out-of-town reporters at the trial, but not the citizens of Coaltown, to learn that he was murdered during his customary Sunday afternoon rifle practice.
    Five years after that notorious trial the mines near Coaltown closed down—the “Bluebell Mine” and the “Henrietta B. MacGregor.” The quality of the coal had been deteriorating for a long time and now the quantity was diminishing. The town dwindled in size. The families of the convict and the murdered man moved away. Their houses changed hands a number of times. They bore signs that said ROOMS and FOR SALE , but finally the signs became illegible and fell from the walls. Their broken windows admitted rain and snow; birds built nests upstairs and down; their picket fences leaned across the sidewalks like breaking waves. The summerhouse behind “The Elms” slid into the pond. In the autumn children were sent by their mothers to gather the butternuts at “St. Kitts,” the chestnuts at “The Elms.”
    With the cessation of activity in the mines the quality of the air improved. No housewife ventured to hang white window curtains, but the girls at the high school’s graduation exercises first wore white dresses in 1910. There were