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The Black Indies

(Sometimes Called The Child of the Cavern)







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 Antiquarian Society,

of which he had been made president.  He was also included

amongst the most active members of the Royal Institution; and the

Edinburgh Review frequently published clever articles signed by him.