The Underground City or the Child of the Cavern

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CHAPTER I. CONTRADICTORY LETTERS


To Mr. F. R. Starr, Engineer, 30 Canongate, Edinburgh.

IF Mr. James Starr will come to-morrow to the Aberfoyle coal-mines,
Dochart pit, Yarrow shaft, a communication of an interesting nature will
be made to him.

“Mr. James Starr will be awaited for, the whole day, at the Callander
station, by Harry Ford, son of the old overman Simon Ford.”

“He is requested to keep this invitation secret.”

Such was the letter which James Starr received by the first post, on the
3rd December, 18--, the letter bearing the Aberfoyle postmark, county of
Stirling, Scotland.

The engineer’s curiosity was excited to the highest pitch. It never
occurred to him to doubt whether this letter might not be a hoax. For
many years he had known Simon Ford, one of the former foremen of the
Aberfoyle mines, of which he, James Starr, had for twenty years, been
the manager, or, as he would be termed in English coal-mines, the
viewer. James Starr was a strongly-constituted man, on whom his
fifty-five years weighed no more heavily than if they had been forty.
He belonged to an old Edinburgh family, and was one of its most
distinguished members. His labors did credit to the body of engineers
who are gradually devouring the carboniferous subsoil of the United
Kingdom, as much at Cardiff and Newcastle, as in the southern counties
of Scotland. However, it was more particularly in the depths of the
mysterious mines of Aberfoyle, which border on the Alloa mines and
occupy part of the county of Stirling, that the name of Starr had
acquired the greatest renown. There, the greater part of his existence
had been passed. Besides this, James Starr belonged to the Scottish
Antiqua