*

After three frantic days of fighting against calamity, during which
Andrew never left the fight except for that brief journey to tell Nellie
the news, at last they came upon the crushed mass of bloody pulp and
rags, smashed together so that the one could not be told from the
other--father and son, a heap of broken bones and flesh and blood....
And no pen can describe accurately the scene.

The light had gone out from one woman's heart, the hope had been crushed
from her life. The rainbow which had promised so much vanished. The lust
and urge had gone out of eager life. Never again would the world seem
fair and beautiful. Instead, all the weary fight and desperate battle
with poverty and privation over again; the dull misery and the drab
gray existence, and always the pain--the heavy, dragging pain of a
broken life. With a woman's "Oh! my God!" the world for one heart stood
still, and the blind fate of things triumphed, crushing a woman's soul
in the process.

CHAPTER XI

THE STRIKE

A week had passed, and Geordie Sinclair and his boy, or at least all
that could be gathered up of them, had been laid to rest.

Nellie was very ill, and was now in bed. The reaction had been too much
for her. But, as Jenny Maitland had said: "She's never cried yet, an' it
would hae been better gin she had. She jist looked at ye wi' her big
black e'en sae vexed-like and faraway lookin', an' never spoke hardly.
When they carried out the coffins, she sprang up gin she wad follow
them, but was putten back to bed again. It was heart-vexin' to look at
her."

Robert suffered, too. The sympathy of everyone went out to him. At night
when he went to bed the whole scene was reenacted before him in all its
horror. Those tense moments of tragedy had so powerfully impressed his
boyish mind that he could never forget them.

At the end of the week Andrew Marshall visited them to talk over
matters. A collection had been made at the pay-office by the men
employed at the pit, and a beautiful wreath purchased and placed upon
the grave. A substantial balance had been handed over to Mrs. Sinclair,
and this defrayed the expenses of the funeral. After Andrew had spoken
of various things, he broke on to the object of his errand that night.

"I hae been thinkin', Nellie," he began nervously, "that I could tak'
Rob in wi' me. Ye see, I ha'e no callans o' my ain, and I ha'e aye to
get yin to draw off me. So, gin ye're agreeable, I could tak' R