them had been a keen sportsman.  The cry of the hounds rang in his dreams of a night, and when Mary Hesketh, lying by her husband’s side, heard him muttering in his sleep:  “Tally-ho!  Hark to Rover!  Stown away!” she knew that, when the hooter sounded at half-past five, it would summon him, not to work, but to a day with the hounds.  He would return home between four and five, mud-stained from head to foot, triumphant at heart, but with an amusingly cowed expression on his face, as of a dog that expects a whipping.

The only whipping that Mary Hesketh could administer to her repentant Job was that of the tongue.  In her early matrimonial life she had wielded this like a flail, and Job had winced before the blows which she delivered.  But in course of time she had come to realise that her husband’s passion for the chase was incurable, and, like a wise woman, she accepted it as part of her destiny.  “Thou’s bin laikin’ agean, thou gert good-for-nowt,” was her usual greeting for Job on these occasions.

“Ay, ay, lass,” he would reply; “I’ve addled nowt all t’ day.  But thou promised, when we wed, to tak me for better or worse; an’ if t’ worse wasn’t t’ hounds, it would happen be hosses or drink.  Sithee, Mally, I’ve browt thee a two-three snowdrops; thou can wear ’em o’ Sunday.”

Such was the Job Hesketh that I had known and loved for many years, and I saw no reason why his genial temper and buoyant heart should not remain with him to the end of his life.  Yet within six months the man changed completely.  He grew suddenly old and shrunken; the great blithe laugh that pealed through the house was silenced, the look of suave contentment with himself and with the world about him vanished from his face, and in its place I saw a nervous, troubled glance as of one who suspects a lurking foe ready to spring at his throat.  The change which came over Job was like that which sometimes comes over a city sky in autumn.  The morning breaks fair, and the sun rises from out a cloudless, frosty sky, promising a day of sunshine.  But then, with the lighting of a hundred thousand fires, a change takes place.  The smoke cannot escape in the windless air, but hangs like a pall over the houses.  The sun grows chill, coppery and rayless, and soon a fog, creeping along the river, silently encloses each particle of smoke within a watery shroud, and a mantle of murky gloom invests the city.

What was it that wrought this sudden change in the mind of Job Hesketh?  The story is soon told.  For a long time there had been no serious accident at the Leeds Steel Works, and the workmen, almost without being aware of it, had grown somewhat reckless of the dangers which they had to face.  They knew quite well that in many of the operations which the metal undergoes in its passage from crude ore to ingots of steel, a false step meant instant death.  But they had known this so long that the knowledge had lost its terrors.