‘Yes, I believe that is so.’

‘It wur that dog as welly killed Moses Fletcher, wurnd it?’

‘I think it was,’ replied Mr. Penrose.

‘And haa is owd Moses sin yo’ dipped him o’er agen?  It ‘ll tak’ some watter and grace to mak’ him ought like, I reckon.  But they tell me he’s takken to gien his brass away.  It ‘ll noan dry th’ een o’ th’ poor fo’k he’s made weep, tho’—­will it, Mr. Penrose?’

‘Perhaps not, Mrs. Halstead; but Moses is an altered man.’

‘And noan afore it wur time.  But what’s that noise in th’ yard?  It saands like th’ colliers.  What con they be doin’ aat o’ th’ pit at this time?  They’re noan off the shift afore ten, and it’s nobbud hawve-past six.’

In another moment the door of the cottage was thrown open and a collier entered, white with falling snow, and breathless.  When he had sufficiently recovered, he said: 

‘Gronny, little Job Wallwork’s getten crushed in th’ four-foot, and it’s a’most up wi’ him.  They’re bringin’ on him here.’

’Whatever wilto say next, lad?  Poor little felley, where’s he getten hurt?  On his yed?’

‘Nay; he’s crushed in his in’ards, and he hasnd spokken sin’.  They’re carryin’ him on owd Malachi’s coite’ (coat).

A sound of shuffling feet was heard in the snow, and four men, holding the ends of a greatcoat, bore the pale-faced, swooning boy into the glare of Mrs. Halstead’s kitchen.  His thin features were drawn, and a clayey hue overspread his face—­a hue which, when she saw with her practised eye, she knew was the shadow of the destroyer.

‘Poor little felley!’ she cried; ‘and his mother a widder an’ all.’

And then, bending down over the settle whereon they had placed the mangled lad, she pressed her lips on the pale brow, clammy with the ooze of death—­lips long since forsaken by the early blush of beauty, yet still warm with the instinct which in all true women feeds itself with the wasting years.  Tears fell from her eyes—­tears that told of unfathomed deeps of motherhood, despite her threescore years and ten; while with lean and tremulous hand she combed back the dank masses of hair that lay in clusters about the boy’s pallid face.  Her reverence and love thus manifested—­a woman’s offering to tortured flesh in the dark chamber of pain—­she unbuckled the leathern strap that clasped the little collier’s breeches to his waist, and, with a touch gentle enough to carry healing, bared the body, now discoloured and torn, though still the veined and plastic marble—­the flesh-wall of the human temple, so fearfully and wonderfully made.

The boy lay immobile.  Scarce a pulse responded to the old woman’s touch as she placed the palm of her hand over the valve of his young life.  Nor did her fomentations rouse him, as feebler grew the protest of the heart to the separation of the little soul from the mangled body.  At last the watchers thought the wrench was over, and Death the lord of life.