dy covered with cuts and bruises. His house was scarcely a furlong
distant, yet he was an hour crawling to it. His room was up a short
stair of ten steps. The steps beat him; he leaned on the rail at the
bottom, and called out piteously, "My wife! my wife! my wife!" three
times.

Mrs. Wilde ran down to him, and caught hold of his hand, and said,
"Whatever is to do?"

When she took his hand the pain made him groan, and she felt something
drip on to her hand. It was blood from his wounded arm. Then she was
terrified, and, strong with excitement, she managed to get him into the
house and lay him on the floor. She asked him, had he fallen off the
kiln? He tried to reply, but could not, and fainted again. This time he
was insensible for several hours. In the morning he came to, and told
his cruel story to Whitbread, Bolt, and others. Bolt and Whitbread took
it most to heart. Bolt went to Mr. Ransome, and put the case in his
hands.

Ransome made this remark:--"Ah, you are a stranger, sir. The folk
hereabouts never come to us in these Union cases. I'll attend to it,
trust me."

Bolt went with this tragedy to Henry, and it worried him; but he could
do nothing. "Mr. Bolt," said he, "I think you are making your own
difficulties. Why quarrel with the Brickmakers' Union? Surely that is
superfluous."

"Why, it is them that quarreled with me; and I'm Ben Bolt, that is
bad to beat." He armed himself with gun and revolver, and watched the
Whitbreads' yard himself at night.

Two days after this, young Whitbread's wife received an anonymous
letter, advising her, as a friend, to avert the impending fate of her
husband, by persuading him to dismiss the police and take back his
Hands. The letter concluded with this sentence, "He is generally
respected; but we have come to a determination to shoot him."

Young Whitbread took no apparent notice of this, and soon afterward the
secretary of the Union proposed a conference. Bolt got wind of this, and
was there when the orators came. The deputation arrived, and, after a
very short preamble, offered to take the six-pence.

"Why," said Bolt, "you must be joking. Those are the terms poor Wilde
came back on, and you have hashed him for it."

Old Whitbread looked the men in the face, and said, gravely, "You are
too late. You have shed that poor man's blood; and you have sent an
anonymous letter to my son's wife. That lady has gone on her knees to us
to leave the trade, and we have consente