e wouldn't be another
strike in the country."

"It's a burning shame," another chimed in; "here us and the childer will
have to starve for weeks, months may be, and all the homes will be broke
up, and the furniture, which has took so long to get together, put
away, just because the men won't do with one glass of beer less a day."

"The union's the curse of us a'," Mrs. Haden said. "I know what it'll
be--fifteen bob a week for the first fortnight, and then twelve for a
week, and then ten, and then eight, and then six, and then after we've
clemmed on that for a month or two, the union'll say as the funds is
dry, and the men had best go to work on the reduction. I knows their
ways, and they're a cuss to us women."

"Here be'st thy Jack. He grows a proper lad that."

"Ay," Jane Haden agreed, "he's a good lad, none better; and as for
learning, the books that boy knows is awesome; there's shelves upon
shelves on 'em upstairs, and I do believe he's read 'em all a dozen
times. Well, Jack, have ee cum from meeting?"

"Ay, mother; I heard them talk nonsense till I was nigh sick, and then I
comed away."

"And will they go for the strike, Jack?"

"Ay, they'll go, like sheep through a gate. There's half a dozen or so
would go t'other way, but the rest won't listen to them. So for the sake
of a shilling a week we're going to lose thirty shillings a week for
perhaps twenty weeks; so if we win we sha'n't get the money we've
throw'd away for twenty times thirty weeks, mother, and that makes
eleven years and twenty-eight weeks."

Jack Simpson was now sixteen years old, not very tall for his age, but
square and set. His face was a pleasant one, in spite of his closely
cropped hair. He had a bright fearless eye and a pleasant smile; but the
square chin, and the firm determined lines of the mouth when in rest,
showed that his old appellation of Bull-dog still suited him well. After
working for four years as a gate-boy and two years with the waggons, he
had just gone in to work with his adopted father in the stall, filling
the coal in the waggon as it was got down, helping to drive the wedges,
and at times to use the pick. As the getters--as the colliers working at
bringing down the coal are called--are paid by the ton, many of the men
have a strong lad working with them as assistant.

"Is t' dad like to be at home soon, Jack?" Mrs. Haden asked, as she
followed him into the house.

"Not he, mother. They pretty well all will be ge