Peter took his pipe out of his mouth and spat savagely on the ground; he then replaced it with great deliberation and looked gloomily at the stoop-side.  He was a man about thirty-five, tall, bony and angular; his neck was long and thin, and his head seemed always on the point of turning to allow him to look over his shoulder.  His right eye was half closed, while his left eye looked big and saucer-like, and never seemed to wink; one eye was ready to laugh and the other to “greet,” as his comrades described it.  He had been badly disfigured in a burning accident in the pit when he was a young man, and a broken nose added still more to the strangeness of his appearance.  Andrew, on the other hand, was stout and broadly built, with a bushy whisker on each cheek, and a clump of tufty hair on his head.

“What do ye mak’ o’ that, Andrew?” enquired Peter, after a few minutes, as he again spat savagely at the stoop-side.

“What do I mak’ o’t?” echoed Andrew, as he glowered across the little bing of dross at his mate, “it’s just in keepin’ wi’ the rest o’ his dirty doin’s, the dirty black brute that he is!”

“I wonder what’s wrong wi’ him?” mused Peter as he sucked quietly at his snoring pipe.  But there was no answer from Andrew, who was sitting silent and glum, gazing at his little lamp.

“What are ye goin’ to do about it, then?” broke in Peter again.

“Just what I said,” returned Andrew with quiet firmness.  “I’ll take that collection the morn, some way or another, if I should be damned for it.  Does he mean to say that we can let folk starve?” He lifted his pick and began to hew the coal with an energy that told of the passion raging within him.

“Does he mean to think I’m goin’ to see decent folk starve afore my e’en?” he asked after a while, pausing to wipe the sweat from his eyes.  “No’ damned likely!  Things ha’e come to a fine pass when folk are compelled to look at other folk starvin’ an’ no’ gi’e them a crust.”

“Do ye think there’s onything in what he said about them bein’ weel-aff?” asked Peter cautiously, while his big eye tried to wink.  “Nellie is a wee bit inclined to be prood an’ independent, ye ken, an’ disna say muckle about her affairs.  An forby we don’t ken very muckle about her; she’s an incomer to the place, and she might ha’e been weel-aff afore she married Geordie, for aught we ken.”

“It disna matter,” replied Andrew, “I dinna care though they had thousan’s.  What I don’t like is this ‘ye’ll-no’-do-this-an’-ye’ll-no’-do-that’ sort o’ thing.  What the hell right has ony gaffer wi’ what a man does?  It’s a’ one to him what I do.  I’m nae slave, an’ forby, I dinna believe they are weel-aff.  They maun be hard up.”

“But he’ll maybe sack ye,” suggested Peter, “if ye take the collection.”

“Well, let him,” cried Andrew, now thoroughly roused, “the bastard!  I would see the greyhounds o’ hell huntin’ him roun’ the rocks o’ blazes afore I’d give in to him!”