Chapter 6—The Albrecht Pit
Frau Bauer, Max Bruckmann’s good landlady, was a Swiss by birth, and widow of a miner, who was killed four years previously in one of those accidents which make a miner’s life so precarious. She was allowed a small annual pension of thirty dollars, and, in addition, the wages of her boy Carl, brought regularly to her every Sunday. She was enabled slightly to increase her income by letting a furnished room.
Although scarcely thirteen, Carl was employed in the coal mine as a trapper; it being his duty to open and shut one of the ventilator doors, whenever it was necessary for the coal trucks to pass. His mother had her house on lease; and as it was too far from the Albrecht pit for him to come home every evening, he had obtained some night work at the bottom of t
