To Mr. F. R. Starr, Engineer, 30 Canongate, Edinburgh.
If Mr. James Starr will come to-morrow to the Aberfoyle coal-mines, Dochartpit, Yarrow shaft, a communication of an interesting nature will be made tohim.
“Mr. James Starr will be awaited for, the whole day, at the Callanderstation, 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 3rdDecember, 18—, the letter bearing the Aberfoyle postmark, county ofStirling, Scotland.
The engineer’s curiosity was excited to the highest pitch. It neveroccurred to him to doubt whether this letter might not be a hoax. For manyyears he had known Simon Ford, one of the former foremen of the Aberfoylemines, of which he, James Starr, had for twenty years, been the manager, or, ashe would be termed in English coal-mines, the viewer. James Starr was astrongly-constituted man, on whom his fifty-five years weighed no more heavilythan if they had been forty. He belonged to an old Edinburgh family, and wasone of its most distinguished members. His labors did credit to the body ofengineers who are gradually devouring the carboniferous subsoil of the UnitedKingdom, as much at Cardiff and Newcastle, as in the southern counties ofScotland. However, it was more particularly in the depths of the mysteriousmines of Aberfoyle, which border on the Alloa mines and occupy part of thecounty of Stirling, that the name of Starr had acqui