offin
swung to the unequal climbing of the men: "Oh, my son--my son--my son!"

"Mother!" Paul whimpered, his hand round her waist.

She did not hear.

"Oh, my son--my son!" she repeated.

Paul saw drops of sweat fall from his father's brow. Six men were in
the room--six coatless men, with yielding, struggling limbs, filling
the room and knocking against the furniture. The coffin veered, and was
gently lowered on to the chairs. The sweat fell from Morel's face on its
boards.

"My word, he's a weight!" said a man, and the five miners sighed, bowed,
and, trembling with the struggle, descended the steps again, closing the
door behind them.

The family was alone in the parlour with the great polished box.
William, when laid out, was six feet four inches long. Like a monument
lay the bright brown, ponderous coffin. Paul thought it would never be
got out of the room again. His mother was stroking the polished wood.

They buried him on the Monday in the little cemetery on the hillside
that looks over the fields at the big church and the houses. It was
sunny, and the white chrysanthemums frilled themselves in the warmth.

Mrs. Morel could not be persuaded, after this, to talk and take her old
bright interest in life. She remained shut off. All the way home in the
train she had said to herself: "If only it could have been me!"

When Paul came home at night he found his mother sitting, her day's work
done, with hands folded in her lap upon her coarse apron. She always
used to have changed her dress and put on a black apron, before. Now
Annie set his supper, and his mother sat looking blankly in front of
her, her mouth shut tight. Then he beat his brains for news to tell her.

"Mother, Miss Jordan was down to-day, and she said my sketch of a
colliery at work was beautiful."

But Mrs. Morel took no notice. Night after night he forced himself to
tell her things, although she did not listen. It drove him almost insane
to have her thus. At last:

"What's a-matter, mother?" he asked.

She did not hear.

"What's a-matter?" he persisted. "Mother, what's a-matter?"

"You know what's the matter," she said irritably, turning away.

The lad--he was sixteen years old--went to bed drearily. He was cut off
and wretched through October, November and December. His mother tried,
but she could not rouse herself. She could only brood on her dead son;
he had been let to die so cruelly.

At last, on December 23, with his five shill