rtisan
wears on Sunday.

'I'd like a word with you, John,' he said, 'if your friend'll excuse.'

Hewett rose from the table, and they walked together to an unoccupied
spot.

'Have you heard any talk about the Burial Club?' inquired the man, in a
low voice of suspicion, knitting his eyebrows.

'Heard anything? No. What?'

'Why, Dick Smales says he can't get the money for his boy, as died last
week.'

'Can't get it? Why not?'

'That's just what I want to know. Some o' the chaps is talkin' about it
upstairs. M'Cosh ain't been seen for four or five days. Somebody had
news as he was ill in bed, and now there's no findin' him. I've got a
notion there's something wrong, my boy.'

Hewett's eyes grew large and the muscles of his mouth contracted.

'Where's Jenkins?' he asked abruptly. 'I suppose he can explain it?'

'No, by God, he can't! He won't say nothing, but he's been runnin'
about all yesterday and to-day, lookin' precious queer.'

Without paying any further attention to Snowdon, John left the room
with his companion, and they went upstairs. Most of the men present
were members of the Burial Club in question, an institution of some
fifteen years' standing and in connection with the club which met here
for social and political purposes; they were in the habit, like John
Hewett, of depositing their coppers weekly, thus insuring themselves or
their relatives for a sum payable at death. The rumour that something
was wrong, that the secretary M'Cosh could not be found, began to
create a disturbance; presently the nigger entertainment came to an
end, and the Burial Club was the sole topic of conversation.

On the morrow it was an ascertained fact that one of the catastrophes
which occasionally befall the provident among wage-earners had come to
pass. Investigation showed that for a long time there had been
carelessness and mismanagement of funds, and that fraud had completed
the disaster. M'Cosh was wanted by the police.

To John Hewett the blow was a terrible one. In spite of his poverty, he
had never fallen behind with those weekly payments. The thing he
dreaded supremely was, that his wife or one of the children should die
and he be unable to provide a decent burial. At the death of the last
child born to him the club had of course paid, and the confidence he
felt in it for the future was a sensible support under the many
miseries of his life, a support of which no idea can be formed by one
who has never for