ion was doing its work,
and told first upon the women and children. Little faces, awhile since
so rosy and bright, grew thin and pinched, chubby arms shrank until the
bone could almost be seen through the skin, and low fever, a sure
accompaniment of want, made its appearance.

No more tender and devoted nurses could be found than the rough women,
who hushed their voices, and stole with quiet feet around the little
beds, letting fall many a silent tear when the sufferer asked for little
things, for tea or lemonade, which there were no means to purchase, or
when the doctor shook his head and said that good food and not medicine
was needed.

The pitmen themselves would saunter aimlessly in and out of the houses,
so changed from the cottages well stocked with furniture, with
gay-coloured pictures on the wall, an eight-day clock, and many another
little valuable, and all gone one after another. Very many of them lived
upon the scantiest allowance of dry bread which would keep life
together, in order that the allowance might all go for the children,
retaining as their sole luxury a penny or two a week for the purchase of
a pipe or two of tobacco daily. Had it not been for the soup-kitchen
scores of children would have died, but the pint of soup and the slice
of bread enabled them to live.

There was no talk of surrender yet, although compromises, which would at
first have been indignantly rejected, were now discussed, and a
deputation had waited upon Mr. Brook, but the owner refused to enter
into any compromise.

"No, never," he said; "you have chosen to join the hands of the other
pits in an endeavour to force your employers into giving you a higher
rate of wages than they can afford to pay. I, therefore, have joined the
other employers. We know, what you cannot know, what are our expenses,
and what we can afford to pay, and we will accept no dictation whatever
from the men as to their rate of wages. If I prefer, as I do prefer,
that the colliery should stand idle, to raising your rate of wages, it
is a clear proof that I should lose money if I agreed to your demand. If
needs be I would rather that the pit was closed for a year, or for ten
years. We have bound ourselves together to make no advance, just as you
have bound yourselves not to go to work at the old rate. When you choose
to go in at that rate there are your places ready for you, but I will
give way in no single point, I will not pay a halfpenny a ton more than