“Carelessness?” I prompted.

“No,” he answered, “I ain’t for callin’ it that.  I was workin’ overtime, an’ I guess I was tired out some.  I worked seventeen years in them mills, an’ I’ve took notice that most of the accidents happens just before whistle-blow.* I’m willin’ to bet that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day.  A man ain’t so quick after workin’ steady for hours.  I’ve seen too many of ’em cut up an’ gouged an’ chawed not to know.”

     * The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
     screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.

“Many of them?” I queried.

“Hundreds an’ hundreds, an’ children, too.”

With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson’s story of his accident was the same as that I had already heard.  When I asked him if he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.

“I chucked off the belt with my right hand,” he said, “an’ made a reach for the flint with my left.  I didn’t stop to see if the belt was off.  I thought my right hand had done it—­only it didn’t.  I reached quick, and the belt wasn’t all the way off.  And then my arm was chewed off.”

“It must have been painful,” I said sympathetically.

“The crunchin’ of the bones wasn’t nice,” was his answer.

His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit.  Only one thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages.  He had a feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had brought about the adverse decision of the court.  Their testimony, as he put it, “wasn’t what it ought to have ben.”  And to them I resolved to go.

One thing was plain, Jackson’s situation was wretched.  His wife was in ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling, sufficient food for the family.  He was back in his rent, and the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.

“They might a-given me that watchman’s job,” were his last words as I went away.

By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson’s case, and the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I began to feel that there was something after all in Ernest’s contention.

He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of him I did not wonder that Jackson’s case had been lost.  My first thought was that it had served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer.  But the next moment two of Ernest’s statements came flashing into my consciousness:  “The company employs very efficient lawyers” and “Colonel Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.”  I did some rapid thinking.  It dawned upon me that of course the company could afford finer legal talent than could a workingman like Jackson.  But this was merely a minor detail.  There was some very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson’s case had gone against him.